ly years of her life I will hasten. On three occasions I
despaired of preserving her existence, which, from the beginning, had
hung by a thread. The first crisis came when she was only four months
old, the second on the occasion of her fourth birthday, and the third
(most serious of all) when she was eleven, at which age she had become
a woman in the Oriental sense and was physically and mentally
comparable with an ordinary European girl of nineteen or twenty.

With what scientific ardor did I study her development, noting how the
_cat_ traits at certain periods (corresponding to the Feast of Bast)
proclaimed themselves above the human traits, whilst at other times
the psychic-felinism sank into a sort of sub-conscious quietude,
leaving the subject almost a normal woman. Of the physical reflections
which were the visible evidence of her hybrid mentality I have already
spoken at length (_this refers to a portion of the statement which has
been deleted_). She invariably wore gloves out of doors and a veil to
conceal the chatoyant eyes. She could, as I have explained, see as
well in the dark as in daylight, and her agility was phenomenal as was
her power of climbing. Having her hands and feet bare I have
repeatedly seen her climb to the top platform of the ivy-clad tower of
Friar's Park.

At the age of eleven, then, I recognized that the balance of character
was definitely established, and that the two outstanding
characteristics of the subject were--firstly (a hereditary trait of
the Coverlys) an intense pride of race and a fierce jealousy of any
infringement upon what she regarded as prerogatives of birth;
secondly, a susceptibility to sudden infatuations which invariably
terminated in a mood of ferocious cruelty.

To one unacquainted with the Orient, thus to speak of this girl--in
years a mere child--as one speaks of a mature woman, would seem
strange, if not unnatural. But in the East, of course, at the age of
ten a girl is counted marriageable; at the age of fourteen she is not
infrequently the devoted mother of a family.

Significantly--from the point of view of the Damar Greefe Law--my ward
had grown up, not as English girls grow, but, like the Easterners, as
the hot-house flower grows. The point has intense interest for the
scientist. At the age of twelve she was a tall, slender woman,
beautifully formed and with a natural elegance and taste which came
from the Coverly stock, or possibly from her mother's side.