present circumstances; but without an inducement of this kind, Verna felt herself to be safe. What happy visions floated through her brain as she sat on the steps of the sundial, and looked at the house which was to be her kingdom! What a thing it is to come suddenly from poverty and obscurity into wealth, and ease, and honour, and glory! Mr. Bassett out in Calcutta was not badly off, but he had brought up his daughters very economically, and he had not concealed his desire to get rid of them as soon as possible. Verna had thwarted and provoked her father by not marrying. He had sworn it was her fault, though she knew it was not her fault. Surely he could not wish nor expect her to marry a subaltern in a line regiment, which was all the Fates had sent in her way? But still he had been dissatisfied, warmly asserting that the business of girls who came to India was to marry--well, if they could, but anyhow to marry--a view of the case which disgusted his daughter; and there were complications about a second half-caste family of young Bassetts which made her very glad to escape from her father’s paternal care. After all the storms that had surrounded her existence, and all the shabbiness of her beginning, and fear of future shabbiness in store, it may be imagined what it was to Verna when her ship suddenly sailed into this bay of plenty. She disliked cold winds generally, but the cold wind to-day, though it blew from the east, did not affect her as she sat on the base of the sundial and contemplated her empire. Not without a struggle had that empire been attained. She had almost despaired when she saw how her sister in the strength of her folly, had put to flight the Heriots, and emptied the house; but still she had been patient and bided her time, and that time had come at last. Short-sighted young woman! She did not perceive, till she had put up her eyeglass, that Johnnie Hepburn was leading Mrs. Charles out from the open window to take the air upon the cliff. When she did see it, she congratulated herself only on having found some one to amuse Matty--for she had no eyeglass to remedy that short-sightedness so far as the future is concerned, which is common to the human race.