As we meet her, she is seated in a lounging chair in her own drawing-room, at Mudlianah, with a decided look of discontent or unhappiness upon her countenance. The scene around her would seem fair enough in the eyes of those who were not condemned to live in it. Her room is surrounded by a broad verandah, which is so covered by creepers as to be a bower of greenery. Huge trumpet-shaped blossoms of the most gorgeous hues of purple, scarlet and orange, hang in graceful festoons about the windows and open doorways, whilst the starry jessamine and Cape honeysuckle fill the air with sweetness. Beyond the garden, which is laid out with much taste, though rather in a wild and tangled style, owing to the luxuriance of the vegetation, lie a range of snowy hills which appear quite close in the transparent atmosphere, although in reality they are many miles away. Mrs. Dunstan’s room is furnished, too, with every luxury as befits the room of a colonel’s wife, even in an up country station. The chairs and sofas are of carved ebony wood, and cane work from Benares; the table is covered with flowers, books and fancy work; a handsome piano stands in one corner; the floor is covered with coloured matting, and in the verandah are scattered toys from various countries, a token that this comfortable home does not lack the chief of married joys, a child-angel in the house. The mistress, too, is still young and still handsome, not wanting the capacity for intellectual nor the health for physical enjoyment, there must be some deeper reason than outward discomfort therefore for that sad far-away look in her eyes and the pain which has knitted her brow. Yes, “Mees Margie MacQueerk” (as she would style herself), has been giving Mrs. Dunstan an hour of her company that morning, and as usual left her trail behind her.