She had come to the Island, in her first youth, as the daughter of the American Consul who represented the United States in the council chambers where were gathered those who discussed affairs of state with the ruling Spanish powers; her father had purchased the beautiful site on which he had built the home that was still hers, although both of her parents had died, there in Cuba, within the past few years; the girl had been left practically without living relatives, and, so, loving her Island home, she had remained there in spite of the solicitations of many American friends who had visited her in Cuba and urged her to return to the United States with them; she was of a reticent and retiring disposition, loving a good book more than almost anything else in the world, and being surrounded by a splendid library, her time was fully and pleasantly occupied, as she had trustworthy retainers who followed her mandates because they loved to fulfill them and pitied her loneliness while they almost worshiped her superior manners and style of speech as well as of living; Father Felix, alone, understood her mental attainments and was greatly bewildered when she told him that she had married Victorio Colenzo as he considered her far removed from the peons who were the regular inhabitants of the Island and among whom he labored as a missionary rather than as an equal, although his deep humility of manner always led them to believe that he was on their own level of intelligence, while the aloofness of this one woman set her apart from all of her neighbors and made her seem to them like a being from another and a higher world.