Chapter III: 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.