These were the deaths of the aged Count de la Vera and his fragile young wife, who passed away within a few days of each other, leaving their orphan child, Maria de Gloria, to the care of her maternal aunt and uncle, who gladly received her. CHAPTER II MARIA GLORIA DE LA VERA A willful elf, an uncle’s child, And half a pet and half a pest, By turns angelic, wicked, wild, Made chaos of the household nest. ANON. Gloria was seven years old when she came to live with her uncle and aunt. She was too young and too bright to realize the loss she had sustained in the death of her parents, or to grieve long after them. And besides—was it a new affection, or was it a reminiscence of the old one? She soon became devotedly attached to her uncle. It was a grim home to which the radiant child had been brought; but nothing could dim the brightness of her spirit or depress the gladness of her heart—not old Promontory Hall with its gray, massive, prison-like structure, its high stone walls, and its dreary sea view, drearier than usual in the dull December days in which Gloria looked upon it—not even the deadening coldness that was creeping like a blighting frost between the husband and the wife—a coldness that the warm-hearted child felt rather than understood. This condition, it must be confessed, was the fault of Eusebie rather than Marcel. It grew out of the jealousy and suspicion that had their root in her inordinate and exacting affection for him. Her self-tormenting spirit whispered that he had never really loved her, but had married her out of compassion, or, worse still, that he had never even cared for her in any manner, but had taken her for her little fortune alone. She saw that, as the years passed away, and hope of a family died out, he was disappointed in the continued absence of children, and she persuaded herself that he secretly hated and despised her for not giving them to him. All this wore out her health and spirits. And so she grew more and more irritable and petulant, often repelling his best-meant efforts to comfort and cheer her—telling him she wanted none of his capricious sympathy, his hypocritical tenderness; she could live without either. All this he bore with the greater patience because he knew it could not last long—because he saw the fiery soul was burning out the fragile body, and because he felt that there was a grain of truth in the stack of falsehood. It was this—that he had married her for pity, or for such love as pity inspires. The coming of Gloria into this house of discord had been as the advent of an angel in purgatory. Her very presence had a mediating, reconciling power.