Among the fine scenery which lies upon the upper portions of the Delaware Bay, there is a splendid old mansion house, large, massive, and bearing deeper marks of antiquity and aristocratic ownership, than are usually found in a country where dwellings that have withstood the ravages of a hundred years are seldom to be found. It was a superb countryplace, uplifted above the bay, and commanding one of the finest prospects in the whole country. Picturesque and broken scenery lay all around. Portions of this scenery were wild, and even rude, in their thrifty luxuriance, while close around the dwelling reigned the most perfect cultivation. Park-like groves, lawns fringed with choice shrubberies, and glowing with a profusion of flowers, might be seen from every window of the dwelling. The stables, lodges, and other buildings, all in excellent repair, bespoke a degree of prosperous wealth, and a luxurious taste, seldom found in our primitive land. A spacious veranda that ran along the front, commanded a beautiful view of the distant bay and all the broken shore, for miles and miles on either hand. In the whole State of Delaware could not have been found, at that day, a gentleman’s residence more perfect in itself, or more luxurious in its appointments. To this house Mr. D. took his family to spend the summer months, and Myra entered it, for the first time in her life, with a feeling of profound loneliness. This noble mansion was to have been her inheritance; she had spent all her girlhood in the shadows of its walks; she had learned to love every tree and flower and shady nook that surrounded it—to love them as the home of her parents, the home that should hereafter shelter her and her children. Now she entered it sadly, and with a feeling of cold desolation. Transient, certainly, but very painful were these natural regrets. But amid all the shadows that hung around her path, there was one gleam of golden sunshine. _His_ love was left to her—_his_ faith still remained firm and perfect. With the visitors who came with Mr. D. to his country dwelling, was a distant relation of the family, his wife, and two lovely children. To these persons the secret of Myra’s birth was made known, and to the lady, young and apparently amiable, Myra sometimes fled for counsel and sympathy. But to these persons the secret of Myra’s parentage opened new and selfish hopes that forbade all genuine friendship for the confiding girl. Myra, severed by all ties of blood from the family that had adopted her, now seemed only an obstacle in the way of their own interests. The excessive love still expressed for her both by Mr. D. and his angelic wife, seemed so much defrauded from the rights of their own offspring, and those who had flattered and fawned abjectly on the daughter and the heiress, now returned the touching confidence of the orphan with treachery and dislike.