SKETCHING THE PAST.
While she kneels there desolately on the cold wet sands, we will
briefly sketch her past for you, reader.
She was an heiress, this dark-eyed girl sobbing there as forlornly as
if she had not a friend on earth. She had houses and land and gold,
but all her vast possessions had not kept her life from being sad and
lonely, for she was an orphan, and she had neither kith nor kin save a
sour maiden aunt who lived with her in lonely state at the great house
up yonder on the high bluff.
Five years ago she had been Nina Selwyn, a spoiled little girl of
thirteen years, the idol of her father and her gentle step-mother, for
Nina’s own mamma had died when her first-born was a toddling baby. Mr.
Selwyn had mourned her devoutly for five years, and then he married a
beautiful young widow with one son, Talbot Strangemore.
The second marriage resulted happily, perhaps the more happily because
no children came to usurp the place of the loving, petted, and yet
willful little Nina. Mrs. Selwyn was a good woman, and having no
daughter of her own lavished all the love she could spare from her son
upon her second husband’s only child. She was neither calculating nor
mercenary yet as the years rolled on, vague, pleasant dreams came to
her of a future in which the lives of Talbot Strangemore, her son, and
of Nina Selwyn, her little step-daughter, were bound together with a
flowery chain.
Mr. Selwyn shared these pleasant dreams. He had a profound admiration
for his step-son, then a youth ten years the senior of little Nina.
Talbot Strangemore merited all the loving admiration and pride that
was bestowed upon him. He was noble, gifted, and remarkably handsome
in a bold, manly style. He was in college, but all his vacations were
spent at Selwyn Heights, his step-father’s stately residence, where he
enjoyed himself intensely in the manly sports of hunting, fishing and
rowing, delighting in such recreations after the confinement of his
Alma Mater.
Little Nina, whose spirits were as gay and light as a wild bird’s, was
his frequent companion at these times, and the young heiress regarded
her step brother with a species of hero-worship that was carefully
fostered by her parents, who, while they encouraged the affection of
the pair, tried to preserve it from a fraternal cast. Nina was never
permitted to call Talbot her big brother any more than he was allowed
to term her his little sister. They were never suffered to forget that
there was no tie of real kinship between them.
“For if they grow up loving each other as brother and sister they will
never think of each other in any nearer, dearer light,” argued Mrs.
Selwyn, and she took the greatest pains to manage affairs agreeably to
the aim she had in view, although she gave no inkling of her designs
to the boy and girl for whom in innocent unconsciousness she was laying
up a heritage of woe.
Both she and Mr. Selwyn thought it would be for the happiness of both,
if they could one day be united in marriage. Talbot was so manly and
gifted, but had very little money, while Nina had so much, and although
she was a delicate, thin little creature now, she gave promise of
future beauty of a rare and unusual type, for she had hair of the real
golden shade and eyes as dark as pansies. She was thin and sunburned
now, for they could never keep her in the house, but the tan would wear
off when she was a young lady and she would be a real beauty, Mrs.
Selwyn averred knowingly, and, managed rightly, Talbot could not help
falling in love with the young heiress.
But when Talbot graduated at twenty-three with all the honors of his
Alma Mater, Nina at thirteen was not making any very rapid strides
toward being a charming young lady. She was such a willful, capricious,
yet withal loving little thing, and her wishes were so absolute that
her education had been dreadfully neglected. Mr. Selwyn loved her
too well to send her away from him to school, so he had employed
governesses at home, who one after another resigned their situations in
despair, declaring that Miss Selwyn would not attend to her books, and
that she was a wretched little romp, who cared for nothing but boats,
and dogs, and horses, and rough out-door sports.
Unfortunately, these charges were all quite true. Nina _did_ hate
books, and she _did_ love to be out of doors all the time, gathering
flowers in the splendid gardens and conservatories of Selwyn Heights,
or boating fearlessly on the billowy sea, or riding at break-neck pace
on her spirited white pony, with a grumbling groom galloping behind
her. Thus life went on, until she was thirteen, and from time to time
her doting parents would say, excusingly:
“The child is so thin and delicate that it is best to let her gain
health and strength in her outdoor pursuits, that she first learned to
love when she was Talbot’s little companion. There is time enough yet
to restrain her and educate her before she is a young lady.”
Poor little Nina Selwyn, those were her happiest days--those free,
untroubled days that were soon to be only a memory--the sweetest memory
in a life that in the coming time was to have many a thorn among its
roses. For suddenly, from a sky that had hitherto been cloudless and
serene, fell a swift, terrible bolt of fate.
Just before Talbot came home to prepare for the European tour that was
to follow his college course, Mr. Selwyn died suddenly one evening
while sitting peacefully in his chair watching a beautiful sunset
scene. All his affairs were found in perfect order at the reading of
the will. His large fortune was divided equally between his idolized
daughter and his beloved wife, the latter being appointed Nina’s
guardian.
But the loving wife did not live to discharge the sacred trust
bequeathed her. She was a nervous, delicately-organized woman, and she
never recovered the shock of her husband’s sudden death. In two weeks
she followed him to the grave, leaving behind her the two whom she
loved so well, and for whose future she had so hopefully plotted and
planned--a future which she influenced as much as her limited time on
earth would permit her, for before she died, she had joined the hands
of the beloved son and the simple, unformed girl of thirteen--had seen
consummated the marriage that is the subject of our story.