Millicent Almsford awoke early on the morning after her arrival. "What is the matter?" she asked. No one answering her question, she put another. "Why do we not go on, what are we stopping for?" this still in a semi-somnolent voice. On opening her eyes and finding that she was not in the berth of the palace car, where she had for a week past always found herself, she laughed outright and then gave a deep sigh. Her long journey, from the Palazzo Fortunio in Venice to the San Rosario Ranch in California, was at an end; and here she was, to use her own phrase, "planted in the wilderness for a year to come." "Heavens! how can I bear it?" she cried, tossing restlessly to the other side of her wide bed; "it is all so new, so raw, so crude, so terrible,--just like this cotton sheet, which has chafed my chin so badly that I would rather have slept without one." Soon a loud bell broke the silence of the morning. Millicent did not heed it, but looked about the room to find a means of summoning assistance. Happily she found the bell quite near her, and, after twice ringing, a tap at her door was heard. In answer to her "Come in," Ah Lam opened the door cautiously. "Missie call Ah Lam?" "I want my breakfast now," said Millicent, somewhat dismayed at the attendant she had summoned. Soon Barbara came, carrying the breakfast tray in her strong arms. "I am so sorry you don’t feel well this morning, Millicent. What can I do for you?" "But I feel perfectly well. Do I look so badly?" "No, dear; but we were afraid, not seeing you--" "Dear Barbara, you must excuse my strange foreign habits. You know I have been only a week in your country. I did not realize that you all came downstairs to breakfast. What time is it?" "After seven." "And you have been up since--?" "Since six o’clock only. Hal is the early riser. Half-past four sees him overlooking the milking." Millicent shuddered; she had indeed come to a strange land. "I will try to learn the customs of your country," she said rather piteously, taking up her cup of coffee. "Only learn those that please you, dear. As for our early breakfast, which I see shocks you, think no more about it. I will gladly bring it up to you every day." "I shall unpack some of my boxes this morning, Barbara; and later we will try some of your duets, if you like." The unpacking of her Penates gave Millicent a certain satisfaction, which was, however, tempered by the sad recollections they brought to her mind, of her own apartment with its three pretty rooms in the corner of the great Palazzo Fortunio. Millicent Almsford was the daughter of an American gentleman who had lived in Venice since before the birth of his daughter. Here the greater portion of her life had been spent, with the interruption only of one long visit made to a relative in England.