eatures were
classic, with the straight forehead, hooked nose, short upper lip, and
pointed chin of the strong old Roman type. His complexion was fair, his
eyes blue, and his hair and beard a golden auburn. Added to these
attractions, there was an intense magnetic power in the gaze of his dark
eyes, and in the tone of his deep voice, a power that few could resist,
and certainly not Sybil Berners.

But who and what besides heiress and beauty was Sybil Berners? To tell
you all she was. I must first tell you something about her family, the
"Berners of Black Hall."

Theirs was an old family, and a historical name interwoven with the
destinies of the two hemispheres. Their house was older than the history
of the new world, and almost as ancient as the fables of the old world.

They were among the first lords of the manor in Colonial Virginia, and
they claimed descent from a ducal house whose patent of nobility dated
back to the first months of the Norman Conquest of England.

They had been great in history and in story; great in the field and the
forum; great in the old country and in the new. They had been a brave,
fierce, cruel, and despotic race, equally feared and hated at home and
abroad, equally loved and trusted as well; for never were such dangerous
foes or such devoted friends as were these Berners; no one ever loved
as these Berners loved, or hated as they hated. In the intensity of
their love or their hate they were capable of suffering or inflicting
death; these Berners, whose friendship was almost as fatal as their
enmity; these Berners, who "never spared man in their hate or woman in
their love;" these Berners of the burning heart; these Berners of the
boiling blood; these Berners of Black Hall; and whose sole
representative now was Sybil, the last daughter of their line, who
concentrated in her own ardent, intense nature all the most beautiful,
all the most terrible attributes of her strong and fiery race.

I said that she was the richest heiress as well as the most beautiful
girl of the country.

She was the inheritor of the famous Black Valley manor, holding besides
its own home plantation, several of the most productive and valuable
farms in the neighborhood.

There is not in all the mountain region of Virginia a wilder, darker,
gloomier glade than that forming the home manor of the Berners family,
and known as the Black Valley. It is a long, deep, narrow vale, lying
between high, steep ridges of ir