Many men knew Denzil by sight, few knew him in actual being.

There was a legend that once he was about to be married, but the girl had suddenly gone mad and drowned herself in the river.

No one thought it strange that a month later the eldest son of the Tarboe family had been found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a bullet through his heart.

No one had ever linked the death of Denzil's loved one with that of Almeric Tarboe.
It was unusual for a Frenchman to give up his life to an English family, but that is what he had done, and of late he had watched Junia with new eager solicitude.

The day she first saw Tarboe had marked an exciting phase in her life.
Denzil had studied her, and he knew vaguely that a fresh interest, disturbing, electrifying, had entered into her.