e day. She smiled at her aunt's hint that she might find
favour in the eyes of the beaux of Bath House. She knew nothing of the
jargon of "the world," nothing of men. Nor did she desire knowledge of
either. Even had her father shown any disposition to part with his
only companion, she would have refused Mrs. Nunn's invitations to pass
a season in London, for she lived an inner life which gave her an
increasing distaste for realities. It was before the day when women,
unimpelled by poverty or genius, flew to the ink-pot with their
over-burdened imaginations. To write a book had never occurred to
Anne, although she had led a lonely life in a forgotten corner of
England where even her duties were few; the old servants knew their
tasks before she was born, and her father preferred his pen and his
laboratory to the society of his daughter. She must preside at his
table, but between whiles she could spend her time on the sea or the
moors, in the library or with her needlework--the era of governesses
passing--as she listed.

And the wild North Sea, the moors and her books, above all, her
dreams, had sufficed. Her vivid and intense imagination had translated
her surroundings into the past, into far-off countries of which she
knew as much as any traveller, oftener and still oftener to the
tropics, to this very island of Nevis. Then, suddenly, her father
had died, leaving her, until she reached the age of five-and-twenty,
in the guardianship of his sister, Mrs. Nunn, who purposed making
her favourite pilgrimage the following winter, insisted that Anne
accompany her, and finally rented the manor over her head that she be
forced to comply. The truth was she intended to marry the girl as soon
as possible and had no mind that she should squander any more of her
youth unseen by man. The shrewd old woman knew the value of that very
ignorance of convention, that lack of feminine arts and wiles, so
assiduously cultivated by young ladies in the matrimonial market,
that suggestion of untrammelled nature, so humbly deprecated by Anne.
Moreover, concluded Mrs. Nunn, ruffling herself, she was a Percy and
could not but look well-bred, no matter how ill she managed her hoop
or curled her hair.

But although Mrs. Nunn could appraise the market value of a comely
exterior and the more primitive charms of nature, of Anne Percy she
knew nothing. She had puzzled for a moment at the vehement refusal of
the young recluse to visit the West Indies, and