They had all heard the story of the widow's heir, so long lost, and now, dark and mysterious as Count Lara, returned to lord it in his ancestral halls.

He was a very hero of romance--a wealthy hero, too--and all the pretty man-traps on the avenue, baited with lace and roses, silk and jewels, were coming to-night to angle for this dazzling prize.
The long-silent drawing-rooms, shrouded for twenty years in holland and darkness, were one blaze of light at last.

Flowers bloomed everywhere; musicians, up in a gilded gallery, discoursed heavenly music; there was a conservatory where alabaster lamps made a silver moonlight in a modern Garden of Eden; there was a supper-table spread and waiting, a feast for the gods and Sybarites; and there was Mrs.Walraven, in black velvet and point lace, upright and stately, despite her sixty years, with a diamond star of fabulous price ablaze on her breast.

And there by her side, tall, and dark, and dignified, stood her only son, the prodigal, the repentant, the wealthy Carl Walraven.
"Not handsome," said Miss Blanche Oleander, raising her glass, "but eminently interesting.

He looks like the hero of a sensation novel, or a modern melodrama, or one of Lord Byron's poems.