The crew of the vessel numbered sixty hands all told, and in addition there were twenty saloon passengers. With two of these passengers we have now to deal. The one is a fair young girl, slender, tall, and delicate. She is exceedingly pretty. Her features are regular and delicately chiselled. Her hair is a soft, wavy, golden brown, and her brown eyes are as liquid and gentle as a fawn’s. The pure whiteness of her neck and temples is contrasted by the most exquisite tinge of rose colour in the cheeks, which puts, as it were, a finish upon a perfect picture. The whiteness of her skin, the delicate flush in the face, the brown, flossy hair, the tall, slender, graceful figure were all so suggestive of the purest of flowers that her friends for many years had called her ‘Red Lily.’ Her name was Lily Hetherington, and she yet wanted some months to the completion of her twenty-first birthday. Lily was the daughter of an officer of the Hon. East India Company’s Service--his only daughter, and by him worshipped. For many years he had been stationed in India, and at last, seeing no chance of returning to his wife and family, which consisted of two sons in addition to the girl, he requested them to join him in the East. This request was quickly and gladly complied with, and Mrs. Hetherington and her children started on their journey. Mr. Hetherington at that time was well off, for he had invested all his savings in the Agra and Masterman Bank, and held shares to a large amount in the concern, the stability of which, at that period, no one would have dared to have doubted. Indian officers throughout India swore by it, and they congratulated themselves, as they entrusted their hard won money to the Bank, that they were making splendid provision for their wives and children when those wives and children should become widows and orphans. As Mr. Hetherington possessed considerable influence he had no difficulty in quickly procuring his sons suitable appointments. Fond as he was of his lads, who were aged respectively twenty-two and twenty-four, his love for them was as nothing when compared with that he bore for his beautiful daughter, his ‘Bonnie Red Lily,’ as he called her. Nor was Lily less fond of her father. She was a mere child when he left England, but she had never forgotten him, and never a mail left but it bore from Lily a long and loving epistle to the lonely officer, who was bravely doing his duty in the distant eastern land. One day, soon after her arrival, Mr. Hetherington said to his daughter as they sat in the verandah of the bungalow, ‘Lily, my pet, I have got a little surprise for you.’ ‘Have you, pa dear; and pray what is it?’ she answered. ‘You are such a dear, good kind papa that you are always giving me pleasant surprises.’