Let me rather record a few particulars of my previous history. My father had been a wealthy Englishman; he married the daughter of a rich American planter. My mother died when I, her only child, was but a few years old. My father returned to England after her death, and I was brought up there in the lap of luxury. I was sent to Rugby, and thence to Cambridge; and it was there I first met my cousin Floyd Wyndham--the son of my father's younger brother. We were as different as white and black, but we were the greatest friends in the world. There never was such a lovable fellow as Floyd, and he was the most popular man in our College, and, indeed, wherever he went. He had all the social graces and instincts that I lacked; it was as inevitable to him to charm people as it was to me to repel them; and the best of it was, his success never cost him the least effort--on the contrary, he rather turned up his nose at it. What he saw to like in me I'm sure I cannot imagine; but all the same he did love me with his whole heart, and would have done anything in the world to oblige me. Dear old Floyd! with your lazy blue eyes, your quiet, audacious manner, your drawl and your fun: what a contrast you were to me, to be sure! I never knew anything of his family, there being some misunderstanding or other between my father and his; but our rooms at the College were contiguous, and we were together every day. There was a picture on the wall over his mantelpiece--a portrait of our maternal grandmother, and a lovelier face no painter ever drew. Whenever I dropped in to have a chat with Floyd, I used to sit where I could keep that face in view; it was the only woman's face I ever ventured or cared to look twice at. Floyd used to laugh, and say it was like me to be spoony on my own grandmother: adding, that he had a little sister growing up who was going to be exactly like her, and that I had better begin paying my addresses to her immediately. But, jesting aside, I honestly believe that the memory of that portrait had a good deal to do with my bachelorhood. As for Floyd's sister, I never had seen her or had the opportunity of testing her alleged resemblance. About the middle of our third year at Cambridge, something happened. My father had a stroke of paralysis. I was summoned home, to find him speechless and helpless. I was not yet of age, and the property was under the management of our business agents--as, in fact, it had been during the last ten years. While I was waiting to see whether or not the malady were going to take a dangerous turn, a letter came from America; which I, my father being as he was, opened and read. It told me that my American grandfather was dead, and that his estates, valued at over a million of dollars, were bequeathed (with certain conditions which I need not specify) to myself.