Once or twice in Caterina’s childhood, there had been another boy-visitor at the manor, younger than Maynard Gilfil—­a beautiful boy with brown curls and splendid clothes, on whom Caterina had looked with shy admiration.  This was Anthony Wybrow, the son of Sir Christopher’s youngest sister, and chosen heir of Cheverel Manor.  The Baronet had sacrificed a large sum, and even straitened the resources by which he was to carry out his architectural schemes, for the sake of removing the entail from his estate, and making this boy his heir—­moved to the step, I am sorry to say, by an implacable quarrel with his elder sister; for a power of forgiveness was not among Sir Christopher’s virtues.  At length, on the death of Anthony’s mother, when he was no longer a curly-headed boy, but a tall young man, with a captain’s commission, Cheverel Manor became his home too, whenever he was absent from his regiment.  Caterina was then a little woman, between sixteen and seventeen, and I need not spend many words in explaining what you perceive to be the most natural thing in the world.

There was little company kept at the Manor, and Captain Wybrow would have been much duller if Caterina had not been there.  It was pleasant to pay her attentions—­to speak to her in gentle tones, to see her little flutter of pleasure, the blush that just lit up her pale cheek, and the momentary timid glance of her dark eyes, when he praised her singing, leaning at her side over the piano.  Pleasant, too, to cut out that chaplain with his large calves!  What idle man can withstand the temptation of a woman to fascinate, and another man to eclipse?—­especially when it is quite clear to himself that he means no mischief, and shall leave everything to come right again by-and-by?  At the end of eighteen months, however, during which Captain Wybrow had spent much of his time at the Manor, he found that matters had reached a point which he had not at all contemplated.  Gentle tones had led to tender words, and tender words had called forth a response of looks which made it impossible not to carry on the crescendo of love-making.  To find one’s self adored by a little, graceful, dark-eyed, sweet-singing woman, whom no one need despise, is an agreeable sensation, comparable to smoking the finest Latakia, and also imposes some return of tenderness as a duty.

Perhaps you think that Captain Wybrow, who knew that it would be ridiculous to dream of his marrying Caterina, must have been a reckless libertine to win her affections in this manner!  Not at all.  He was a young man of calm passions, who was rarely led into any conduct of which he could not give a plausible account to himself; and the tiny fragile Caterina was a woman who touched the imagination and the affections rather than the senses.  He really felt very kindly towards her, and would very likely have loved her—­if he had been able to love any one.  But nature had not endowed him with that capability.  She