baronet, the last of his Saxon race and name, the lord of all these
sunny acres, this noble Norman pile, the smiling village of Catheron
below. The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and "bothy" in
the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of
Wight. "A darling of the gods," young, handsome, healthy; and best of
all, with twenty thousand a year.

She is his bride-elect. In her dark way she is very handsome. She is
to be married to Sir Victor early in the next month, and she is as
much in love with him as it is at all possible to be. A fair fate
surely. And yet while the August night shuts down, while the wind
whistles in the trees, while the long fingers of the elm, just outside
the window, tap in a ghostly way on the pane, she stands here, flushed,
angry, impatient, and sullen, her handsome lips set in a tight, rigid
line.

She is very dark at all times. Her cousin Victor tells her, laughingly,
she is an absolute nigger when in one of her silent rages. She has
jet-black hair, and big, brilliant, Spanish eyes. She _is_ Spanish.
Her dead mother was a Castilian, and that mother has left her her
Spanish name, her beautiful, passionate Spanish eyes, her hot,
passionate Spanish heart. In Old Castile Inez was born; and when
in her tenth year her English father followed his wife to the grave,
Inez came home to Catheron Royals, to reign there, a little,
imperious, hot-tempered Morisco princess ever since.

She did not come alone. A big boy of twelve, with a shock head of
blue-black hair, two wild, glittering black eyes, and a diabolically
handsome face, came with her. It was her only brother Juan, an imp
incarnate from his cradle. _He_ did not remain long. To the