The fever of research at last had led me into my first definite crime against society—­if so it can be called.  I had rescued alive the most perfect example of a psycho-hybrid with which throughout my extensive special inquiries, I had ever come in contact.  Lady Coverly never knew her unnatural child, and Sir Burnham—­as well as the old family nurse who had accompanied them out from England—­never doubted that it had died in the hour of birth.

I set to work with enthusiasm upon my last and greatest experiment.

To a half-caste woman upon whom I knew I could rely—­for she was deeply indebted to me—­I entrusted the fostering of the infant hybrid.  I personally supervised every detail of the secret nursery, Cassim procuring for me everything necessary for the rearing of this delicate and fragile creature.

Over the early 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.