I hate you, but I love you

Her childhood had been a strange one. There had been no near relatives to interest themselves in the motherless girl left to the tender mercies of a brother nearly twenty years her senior, who was frankly and undisguisedly horrified at the charge that had been thrust upon him. Full of himself, and free to indulge in the wander thirst that interest him, the baby sister was an excessive burden, and he had shifted the responsibility in the easiest way possible. For the first few years of her life she was left undisturbed to nurses and servants who spoiled her indiscriminately. Then, when she was still quite a tiny child, Sir Kiba Inuzuka came home from a long tour, and, settling down for a couple of years, fixed on his sister's future training, modelled rigidly on his own upbringing. Dressed as a boy, treated as a boy, she learned to ride and to shoot and to fish—not as amusements, but seriously, to enable her to take her place later on as a companion to the man whose only interests they were. His air of weariness was a mannerism. In reality he was as hard as nails, and it was his intention that Hana should grow up as hard. With that end in view her upbringing had been Spartan, no allowances were made just because she's a she which by norms must be treated with tender and ought to grow with elegance and graceful, and nothing was spared to gain the desired result. And from the first Hana had responded gallantly, throwing herself heart and soul into the arduous, strenuous life planned out for her. The only drawback to a perfect enjoyment of life were the necessary lessons that had to be gone through, though even these might have been worse. Every morning she rode across the park to a school for boys, which her brother had adamantly arranged despite of the violent refusal of Lady Utatane, for a couple of hours in a day, 4 days a week. The governor (a man who governs the training of the students) whose heart was more in his stable than in his students, and whose reputation was greater across country than it was in the school. His methods were rough and ready, but she had brains, and acquired an astonishing amount of diverse knowledge. But her education was stopped with abrupt suddenness when she was fifteen by the arrival at the school of an overgrown young cub who had been sent by a despairing parent, as a last resource, to the muscular governor, and who quickly discovered what those amongst whom she had grown up had hardly realised, that Hana Inuzuka, with the clothes and manners of a boy, was really a remarkable beautiful young woman. With the assurance belonging to his type, he had taken the earliest opportunity of telling her so, following it with an attempt to secure the kiss that up to now his own good looks had always secured for him. But in this case he had to deal with a girl who was a girl by accident of birth only, who was quicker with her hands and far finer trained than he was, and whose natural strength was increased by furious rage. She had blacked his eyes before he properly understood what was happening, and was dancing around him like an infuriated young gamecock when the governor had burst in upon them, attracted by the noise.

What she left he had finished, and then, breathless and angry, had ridden back across the park with her and had briefly announced to Sir Kiba, who happened to be at home upon one of his rare visits, that his pupil was both too old and too pretty to continue her studies at the school, and had taken himself off as hurriedly as he had come, leaving Sir Kiba to settle for himself the new problem of Hana. And, as before, it was settled in the easiest possible way. Physically she was perfectly able to take up the role for which he had always intended her; mentally he presumed that she knew as much as it was necessary for her to know, and, in any case, travelling itself was an education, and a far finer one than could be learned from books. So Hana grew up in a day, and in a fortnight the old life was behind her and she had started out on the ceaseless travels with her brother that had continued for the last six years—years of everlasting change, of excitements and dangers.

She thought of it all, sitting on the broad rail of the balcony, her head slanted against the column on which she leaned. "It's been a splendid life," she murmured, "and tomorrow—today begins the most perfect part of it." She yawned and realised suddenly that she was desperately sleepy. She turned back into her room, leaving the windows wide, and, flinging off her wrap, tumbled into bed and slept almost before her head was on the pillow.

It must have been about an hour later when she awoke, suddenly wide awake. She lay quite still, looking cautiously under her thick lashes. The room was flooded with moonlight, there was nothing to be seen, but she had the positive feeling that there was another presence in the room beside her own; she had had a half-conscious vision in the moment of waking of a shadowy something that had seemed to fade away by the window. As the actual reality of this thought striked through the sleep that numb her brain and became a realisation, she sprang out of the bed and ran on to the balcony. It was empty. She leaned over the railing, listening intently, but she could see nothing and hear nothing. Puzzled, she went back into her room and light on the lantern. Nothing seemed to be missing: her watch lay where she had left it on the dressing table; and the suit-cases had apparently not been tampered with. By the bedside the ivory-mounted revolver that she always carried was lying as she had placed it. She looked around the room again, frowning. "It must have been a dream," she said doubtfully, "but it seemed very real. It looked tall and white and solid, and I felt it there." She waited a moment or two, then shrugged her shoulders, turned out the lights, and got into bed. Her nerves were admirable, and in five minutes she was asleep again.