“My father was Scotch—my mother Irish. The two nations don’t amalgamate very well together. The children of such an union are apt to inherit the peculiar national failings of both. My father united to a love of science a great deal of mechanical genius. He was a clever, prudent, enterprising man, and amassed a large fortune. My mother I never knew—she died when I was an infant. My father hired a good-natured, easy kind of woman, to be nurse. She was a widow, without children, whom he afterwards promoted to the head of his table. She was his third wife. He had one son by his first marriage, who had been born in Scotland, and adopted by a rich uncle. He afterwards got an appointment in India; and I never saw him above half-a-dozen times in my life—and only when a child. He was a handsome, proud man, very Scotch in all his words and ways. We never took to one another. He thought me a spoilt, disagreeable, pert child; and I considered him a cross, stern man; and never could be induced to call him brother. “I inherited a good property from my mother, which made me a very independent little lady, in my own conceit. I knew, that the moment I became of age, I was my own mistress. Perhaps it was this consciousness of power which made me the queer being I am. “My step-mother was very fond of me. She spoilt me shockingly—more than most mothers indulge their brats. She always seemed to retain a sense of the inferior position she had held. Not a common failing, by-the-by: persons raised unexpectedly to wealth, from the lower class, generally measure their presumption by their ignorance. She always treated me as a superior. My father was very fond of her. These passive women are always great favourites with men. They have no decided character of their own, and become the mere echoes of superior minds. A vain man loves to see his own reflection in one of these domestic magnifying glasses: it is so gratifying to be the Alpha and Omega in his own house. His former wives were both handsome, conceited women, who thought so much of themselves that they could reflect no perfections but their own. In this respect I resembled my mother—from a baby I thought fit to have a will and opinions of my own. “My step-mother always yielded to my masterly disposition when a child, generally ending the brief contest with the remark, ‘What a pity Willie was not a boy! What a fine spirited boy she would have made!’ When I grew a tall girl, I became more independent still, and virtually was mistress of the house. My father sent me to school. I learnt quickly enough; but I was expelled from half a dozen for striking my teacher whenever she dared to raise her hand to correct me. At length my education was finished, and I returned home for good, as wild and as fierce as an untamed colt.