Publisher's Synopsis
"Why, Don John, how you frightened me!" exclaimed Miss Nellie Patterdale, as she sprang up from her reclining position in a lolling-chair. It was an intensely warm day near the close of June, and the young lady had chosen the coolest and shadiest place she could find on the piazza of her father's elegant mansion in Belfast. She was as pretty as she was bright and vivacious, and was a general favorite among the pupils of the High School, which she attended. She was deeply absorbed in the reading of a story in one of the July magazines, which had just come from the post-office, when she heard a step near her. The sound startled her, it was so near; and, looking up, she discovered the young man whom she had spoken to close beside her. He was not Don John of Austria, but Donald John Ramsay of Belfast, who had been addressed by his companions simply as Don, a natural abbreviation of his first name, until he of Austria happened to be mentioned in the history recitation in school, when the whole class looked at Don, and smiled; some of the girls even giggled, and got a check for it; but the republican young gentleman became a titular Spanish hidalgo from that moment.
