Many a long and bitter hour as she passed from childhood to youth, and
from thence to woman's estate, did the future heiress of the House of
Hamilton ponder sadly over the mysterious and cruel prohibition of her
noble aunt, and as she thus pondered, a strong but indefinite
presentiment of future sorrow and grief and misery in connection with
the fate of her real parents became so completely fastened upon her mind
as to cause her whole deportment to become tinged with a sort of sad and
mournful melancholy, which all the seductive arts of a London life could
not eradicate.

Although numberless suitors of almost every variety of rank and
character had knelt in real and assumed adoration before the virtuous
shrine of the beautiful West Indian heiress, she had turned from them
all with almost loathing indifference, and the summons which she
received (about three months previous to the commencement of our story)
calling upon her to join her father, in company with her uncle, found
her at the age of twenty-three, unmarried and unengaged. In less than a
month however, after her embarcation on board of the Gladiator, a
gradual change had taken place in her whole demeanor, caused by the deep
interest she found herself constrained to take in the person of Henry
Huntington, the son of Sir Arthur Huntington, who had followed the
fortunes of the Earl of Derwentwater during the rebellion, and who had
chosen also to share his banishment. The baronet was a fine specimen of
the old English cavaliers, who had freely spent the greater portion of a
handsome fortune in the service of the Stuart family, and now, when
nearly at the close of a long and eventful life, he with his twin sons
(whose poor mother had died in giving them birth,) had left their own
dear and native soil, to live, and perhaps to die in a foreign land.

These twin sons and brothers, Henry and Arthur Huntington, had arrived