The Marquis, before the engagement of his daughter had become public, had written to his friend Sir Charles of the impending marriage in carefully selected terms which demanded nothing but a few words of formal congratulation. Of his son-in-law he mentioned little more than the name. It was, he said, that of a long-impoverished Piedmontese family with good French connections formed in the days before it had fallen into comparative obscurity but, the Marquis insisted, fully recognized by the parties concerned. It was the family De Montevesso. The world had heard nothing of it for more than a century, the Marquis admitted parenthetically. His daughter's intended husband's name was Helion--Count Helion de Montevesso. The title had been given to him by the King of Sardinia just before that unfortunate monarch was driven out of his dominions by the armies of republican France. It was the reward of services rendered at a critical time and none the less meritorious because, the Marquis admitted, they were of a financial nature. Count Helion, who went away very young from his native country and wandered in many lands, had amassed a large personal fortune, the Marquis went on to say, which luckily was invested in a manner that made it safe from political revolutions and social disasters overwhelming both France and Italy. That fortune, as a matter of fact, had not been made in Europe, but somewhere beyond the seas. The Marquis's letter reached Latham Hall in the evening of an autumn day. The very young Miss Latham, seated before an embroidery frame, watched across the drawing room her father reading the letter under the glare of the reflector lamp and at the feet, as it were, of the Latham in the yellow satin coat. Sir Charles raised his eyebrows, which with passing years had become bushy and spoiled a little the expression of his handsome face. Miss Latham was made very anxious by his play of physiognomy. She had already been told after the first rustle of unfolded paper that her big friend Adèle d'Armand (Miss Latham was four years younger) was going to be married, and had become suddenly, but inwardly, excited. Every moment she expected her father to tell her something more. She was dying from impatience; but there was nothing further except the rustle of paper--and now this movement of the eyebrows. Then Sir Charles lowered his hands slowly. She could contain herself no longer. "Who is it, Papa?" she asked with animation. Henrietta Latham was fifteen then. Her dark eyes had remained as large as ever. The purity of her complexion, which was not of the milk-white kind, was admirable and the rich shade of the brown curls clustering on each side of her faintly glowing cheeks made a rich and harmonious combination. Sir Charles gazed at his daughter's loveliness with an air of shocked abstraction. But he too could not contain himself. He departed from his stateliness so far as to growl out scathingly: "An upstart of some kind."