In all his schemes, Mordred was helped by his nephew, Roger Weycock, twenty-seven years of age, who had been in Santa Barbara since 1883, after having failed for the Diplomatic Service. Roger was a tall, polite, brown-haired, fair-bearded man, with a pleasant manner and a pale, inscrutable face. He was the channel through which Englishmen knew Santa Barbara. It was through his able weekly letters to the English press that English opinion was in favour of Lopez for so long. He knew Lopez to be mad; but the Red party favoured his firm and he had no pity for the Whites: old Miguel de Leyva had once kept him waiting in the hall, and had then brushed by to lunch.
Miguel de Leyva was now dead, leaving many children, including his youngest, the girl Carlotta, born in 1868, who even in infancy impressed people as a creature from another world. She comes into this story (as into many others) as a rare thing, whose passing made all things not quite the same. She was of a delicate, exquisite, unearthly charm, which swayed men, women and children: the Indians of San Jacinto used to kneel as she passed: some have said that animals and birds would come to her: at the least she had a beauty and grace not usual.
Nearly all the province of Encinitas was owned by the last descendant of the Conquistador, Don Manuel of Encinitas, who lived at his palace in his town, or in his hacienda below it, with his old mother, whom they called the Queen Dowager.
Don Manuel was born in 1857. He has been so often described, that it need only be said of him that he was a very glorious young man, noble in beauty and in intellect. In the days of this story he was an unmarried man of not quite thirty. In his youth, before his father died, he had had his wild time in the city with other young men. He had been a friend of Don José, Don Lopez’ son, and had practised black magic with Rafael Hirsch. All this ceased when his father died in 1879. Since then he had lived at Encarnacion, breeding horses, for the men of his State, who are among the great horsemen of the world. He took his stature, beauty and masterful fierce eyes from his mother, the Queen Dowager, who had been a Peralta from Matoche.
In October, 1886, Don Manuel met Carlotta de Leyva for the first time: they became betrothed that same month, to the great joy of the Queen Dowager, who had longed to see her son married.
Miguel de Leyva had a sister Emilia, who married a Piranha of Santa Barbara city, and lived there, after her husband’s death, in a house too big for her fortune. She had been much in England with her husband, either for pleasure or the marketing of copper. She spoke English well. She caused her daughter Rosa, who had been for some years a convent friend of her cousin Carlotta, to spend a year in an English household. Rosa returned to Santa Barbara from England some months before this tale begins.
Rosa Piranha was then nearly twenty, being a few months older than Carlotta. She was slight in build and not very strong, but had a mannish spirit, with courage and dash enough for anything. She had no looks: she was very short-sighted: she always wore tinted spectacles, even when indoors. Yet she was amusing, and very attractive: several Englishmen proposed to her during her stay in England; but she would not marry into their Church.
She was brown-haired, not dark like most of her country women. In herself she had that mixture of boyish cheek with feminine grace which one loves in Viola, in “Twelfth Night.”
On New Year’s Day, 1887, Carlotta and Manuel planned to be married at Easter, in the cathedral church of Santa Barbara.