They were all excellent sailors, bold free-traders, and somewhat overbearing to their fellows.

It was only slowly that the idea came to me that the blood that was in them might be of a different shade and kind from that which flowed so temperately in our cool Sercq veins.
It was much thinking of Carette and her ever-growing beauty and accomplishments which brought me to that.

Truly there was no girl in all Sercq like her, nor on Guernsey I would wager, and her father and brothers also were very different from the other Island men.

As likely as not they were French, come over to escape the troubles.

That would account for many things, and the idea, once in my mind, took firm root there.