“I was sixteen and a half when my mother died. In England I should have been looked upon as a mere girl; in Spain I was a woman. Can you imagine my lot alone, poor, so young, so helpless? I thought my father must have relatives and friends in this far-off England; but I did not know how to reach them. At last the English consul at Madrid wrote for me; he said that the late Captain Payton belonged to the noble old English family of Pelhams, and that if my story were known I should be adopted by some of them. While waiting for the reply, I went to live with the only relative I had in the world--a cousin of my mother--a cross, proud, stiff, elderly lady, Donna Maria de Borga, who hated every one in the world younger than herself. I was so wretched, so unutterably wretched, that I wished myself dead over and over again. You can fancy a flower shut out from the sunshine and left to die in the cold. You can imagine a bird deprived of light and liberty. With my mother, life had been all poetry and happiness; now it was all gloom. “An answer came from England, saying the only member of my father’s family living was Sir Alfred Pelham, and he was traveling on the Continent; that he would make a point of seeing me, and seeing what could be done for me, before he returned. “One day the sun was shining down on Granada, and the myrtles were all in bloom; my aunt, as Donna Maria wished me to call her, had fallen fast asleep, and I went down to the fountain that stood under the shade of tall, spreading trees, the silvery spray reached the leaves and wetted them, then fell with what seemed a laugh at its own graceful waywardness. I liked to watch the spray, when the sun shone through it; it was like a diamond shower. The music of falling water always carries me back to that day. I was looking intently into the water, thinking the thousand thoughts that fill a young girl’s mind, when I was startled suddenly by seeing in the water the reflection of a face close to my own. Had the face been less handsome I might have sprung away in startled alarm; as it was, I looked, and looked again, so meeting my fate. It was an English face, laughing, careless, debonair, with a kind of frank beauty that seemed to me perfection. The eyes were laughing, large and blue, with a certain expression that said: ‘I defy you not to like me, try as you will.’ The hair was of a rich, golden brown; as he stood there in the sunshine there seemed to be threads of gold running through it. I could not see what the mouth was like, for the golden mustache drooped over and hid it. I was then only just seventeen, and I had seen no one in all my life to be compared to this handsome stranger. “‘Am I mistaken,’ said a deep, rich voice, ‘or is this my young kinswoman, Miss Payton?’ “The English tongue was not new to me, for my mother had loved it well; but his words struck me; they moved the deep waters of my soul--they called into life a hundred thoughts that had lain dormant.