Nina Kostalergi was then about seventeen, though she looked at least three years older. She was a tall, slight, pale girl, with perfectly regular features--so classic in the mould, and so devoid of any expression, that she recalled the face one sees on a cameo. Her hair was of wondrous beauty--that rich gold colour which has _reflets_ through it, as the light falls full or faint, and of an abundance that taxed her ingenuity to dress it. They gave her the sobriquet of the Titian Girl at Rome whenever she appeared abroad. In the only letter Kearney had received from his brother-in-law after his sister’s death was an insolent demand for a sum of money, which he alleged that Kearney was unjustly withholding, and which he now threatened to enforce by law. ‘I am well aware,’ wrote he, ‘what measure of honour or honesty I am to expect from a man whose very name and designation are a deceit. But probably prudence will suggest how much better it would be on this occasion to simulate rectitude than risk the shame of an open exposure.’ To this gross insult Kearney never deigned any reply; and now more than two years passed without any tidings of his disreputable relative, when there came one morning a letter with the Roman postmark, and addressed, ‘_À Monsieur le Vicomte de Kilgobbin, à son Château de Kilgobbin, en Irlande._’ To the honour of the officials in the Irish post-office, it was forwarded to Kilgobbin with the words, ‘Try Mathew Kearney, Esq.,’ in the corner. A glance at the writing showed it was not in Kostalergi’s hand, and, after a moment or two of hesitation, Kearney opened it. He turned at once for the writer’s name, and read the words, ‘Nina Kostalergi’--his sister’s child! ‘Poor Matty,’ was all he could say for some minutes. He remembered the letter in which she told him of her little girl’s birth, and implored his forgiveness for herself and his love for her baby.’ I want both, my dear brother,’ wrote she; ‘for though the bonds we make for ourselves by our passions--’ And the rest of the sentence was erased--she evidently thinking she had delineated all that could give a clue to a despondent reflection. The present letter was written in English, but in that quaint, peculiar hand Italians often write. It began by asking forgiveness for daring to write to him, and recalling the details of the relationship between them, as though he could not have remembered it. ‘I am, then, in my right,’ wrote she, ‘when I address you as my dear, dear uncle, of whom I have heard so much, and whose name was in my prayers ere I knew why I knelt to pray.’