There was a third lady present, Miss Kaituna Pethram, who was staying at Pinchler's with the Valpys, and without doubt she was very handsome; so handsome, indeed, that Tommy's brilliant beauty paled before her sombre loveliness. She was dark, unusually dark, with a pale, olive-coloured skin, coils of splendid dusky hair, luminous dark eyes, and clearly-cut features, which were not exactly European in their outline. Neither was her Christian name European, and this being taken in conjunction with her un-English look, led some people to think she had African blood in her veins. In this supposition, however, they were decidedly wrong, as there was no suggestion of the negro in her rich beauty. Indian? not delicate enough, neither as regards features nor figure. Spanish? no; none of the languor of the Creole; then no doubt Italian; but then she lacked the lithe grace and restless vivacity of the Latin race. In fact Miss Kaituna Pethram puzzled every one. They were unable to "fix her," as the Americans say, and consequently gave up the unguessable riddle of her birth in despair. As a matter of fact, however, she was the descendant, in the third generation, of that magnificent New Zealand race, now rapidly dying out--the Maories, and the blending of the dusky Polynesian with the fair European had culminated in the production of this strange flower of two diverse stocks--neither wholly of the one nor of the other, but a unique blending of both. Her great grandparents had been full-blooded Maories, with uncivilised instincts and an inborn preference for a savage life. Their daughter, also a full-blooded Maori, being the daughter of a chief, had married a European settler, and the offspring of this mixed marriage was Kaituna's mother, a half-caste, inheriting the civilised culture of her father, and the savage instincts of her mother. Kaituna was born of this half-caste and an English father, therefore the civilised heredity prevailed; but she still retained the semblance, in a minor degree, of her primeval ancestry, and without doubt, though ameliorated by two generations of European progenitors on the male side, there lurked in her nature the ineradicable instincts of the savage.