Her father was a British soldier of Scotch birth; and her mother a Eurasian. In her youth Maria had some pretensions to good looks. It was the prettiness of youth so often seen where the blood of the east and the west is mixed. Her small regular features and olive complexion could make no claim to beauty in her mature middle age, when her figure had lost its delicate proportions and gained in amplitude. The eyes alone were unaltered. She had her Scotch father's grey eyes with his keen glance. Nothing escaped them, as the servants knew by experience; and when they failed to elucidate a domestic mystery her inherited shrewdness came to her assistance. At the age of sixteen a marriage was made for her by her mother, who chose a prosperous and not over-scrupulous overseer in the Public Works Department named William Delaine. He was more than double the age of his bride; and had lived long enough to put together a nice little property in houses and land. There were no children, and when he died ten years later he left everything to his widow. Her second marriage was to an Englishman, whose regiment was stationed at Bangalore. Corporal William Smith was a reserved man of a thoroughly British temperament, endowed with a rugged honesty that despised any sort of evasion of the truth in speech or action. Uncompromisingly straightforward he did much to carry on the early training of Maria's mind begun by her father. She was very happy with William Smith in a placid way, and bore him a son who was educated in the barrack-school and in due time drafted into the drummer-boy corps attached to the regiment. Later the boy enlisted and followed in the footsteps of his father. William Smith was about to take his pension and return to England when he was struck down with malarial fever; and for the second time in her life Maria became a widow. Her third husband was an Irish soldier who had been pensioned and elected to remain in the country. He also bore the name of William. Being of a good-natured domesticated disposition, Hulver cast his eyes round the large domiciled European and Eurasian community in Bangalore for a suitable wife. Mrs. William Smith seemed in every way the woman to fill the position. She was of the right age, unencumbered by children except for the one son who was provided for. In addition she owned a nice little property which, with his pension, would make life easy and comfortable.