"Well, it was the result largely of a most extraordinary marriage he made. He was in Spain under an assumed name—the truth is he had made such a mess of things here that the family disowned him, and having, as you have, a splendid knowledge of Spanish, he took a Spanish name—Ramon Castelar. His own name was Raymond. The girl was of the powerful family of the Quesadas; but knowing him only as an adventurer and being quite ignorant of his high birth, they turned their backs on him and wouldn’t hear of a marriage. Raymond was a daredevil in his way, however, and the thing ended in a runaway match. A most unfortunate matter." My father spoke of it as a quite deplorable thing, but I admired my uncle as about the pluckiest Carbonnell I had yet heard of. We all have our own points of view, however. "The end was a perfect tragedy, Ferdinand, an awful affair. The Quesadas tried by every means to get your uncle’s wife away from him and in the end succeeded. He was in England at the time, and when he got back to Madrid, he found his wife shut up as a lunatic, his two children—a boy, Ramon, and a girl, Sarita, named after her mother—gone and himself proscribed. These big Spanish families have enormous privileges, you know; far greater than we have here. Well, he never saw her again. She died soon after, under most suspicious circumstances, and it seemed to quite break poor Raymond’s life. He lived only for revenge, and became a moody, stern, utterly desperate man; but he could not fight against them. He found one chance of partial revenge at the time of a Carlist rising. He got hold of the children in some way; and I’m bound to say, although he was my own brother, it was a most unfortunate thing for them. He died soon afterwards, but not before he had ruined the boy’s character. The lad was to have been a priest—the Quesadas were seeing to that—but he broke through all control some years ago, and—well, they tell me there is scarcely a crime forbidden in the Decalogue he hasn’t committed. The least of his offences is that he is a Carlist of the Carlists; he has more than once attempted violence against the Quesada family, and—in fact I don’t know what he hasn’t done. What I do know is that he has involved his sister, Sarita, in some of his confounded Carlist plottings, and it seems to be a desperate entanglement altogether." "Do the Quesadas know of the relationship, sir?"