very young her father, a
professor at one of the smaller universities in New England, in order
to study the archives of the Spanish rulers of Venezuela, had visited
that country, and taken his daughter with him. She was spirited,
clever, and possessed of the particular type of beauty the Spaniard
admires. Young Rojas saw her, and at once fell in love with her, and,
after the death of her father, which occurred in the North, followed
her there and married her. She then was very young and he an attache
in the diplomatic service. Since their marriage, unlike many of his
countrymen, Rojas had not looked with interest upon any other woman,
and, with each year of their life together, their affection had grown
stronger, their dependence upon each other had increased.

In wisdom, in experience, in honors, Rojas had grown rich. In
countries where his own was only a spot upon the map, Rojas himself,
the statesman, the diplomat, the man who spoke and read in many
languages, the charming host with the brilliant wife, was admired,
sought after. There were three children: the two girls, and a son, a
lieutenant of artillery, whose death during the revolution of Andreda
had brought to the family its first knowledge of grief.

Of the two sisters, Lolita, the elder, was like her father--grave,
gracious, speaking but seldom and, in spite of the years spent in
foreign capitals, still a Spanish-American. Her interests were in her
church, her music and the duties of the household.

Of all the names given at her christening to the younger sister, the
one that survived was Inez. Inez was a cosmopolitan. She had been
permitted to see too much of the world to make it possible for her
ever again to sit down tamely behind the iron bars of the Porto
Cabello drawing-room. She was too much like her American mother; not
as her mother was now, after thirty years in a Venezuelan's household,
but as her mother had been when she left the New England college
town. Unlike her sister, she could not be satisfied with the
cloister-like life of the young girls of Spanish-America. During the
time her father had served as minister to Paris she had been at school
in the convent at Neuilly, but at the time he was transferred to
London she was of an age to make her bow at court, and old enough to
move about with a freedom which, had it been permitted her at home,
would have created public scandal. She had been free to ride in the
Row, to play tennis, to walk abro