James Mildred was a noble-hearted gentleman.  At the age of eighteen he quitted England to undertake an appointment in India, which he had obtained through the interest of his uncle, an East Indian Director.  He remained abroad thirty years, and then returned, a stranger, to his native land, the owner of a noble fortune.  His manners were simple and unassuming—­his mind was masculine and well-informed—­his generous soul manifest in every expression of his manly countenance.  He had honourably acquired his wealth, and whilst he amassed, had been by no means greedy of his gains.  He dealt out liberally.  There were many reasons why James Mildred at the age of forty-eight returned to England.  I shall state but one.  He was still a bachelor.  The historian at once absolves the gentler sex from any share of blame.  It was not, in truth, their fault that he continued single.  Many had done their utmost to remove this stigma from James Mildred’s character; had they done less they might, possibly, have been more successful.  Mildred had a full share of sensibility, and recoiled at the bare idea of being snared into a state of blessedness.  The woman was not for him, who was willing to accept him only because his gold and he could not be separated.  Neither was he ambitious to purchase the easy affection of the live commodity as it arrives in ships from England, with other articles of luxury and merchandize.  After years of successful exertion, he yearned for the enjoyments of the domestic hearth, and for the home-happiness which an Englishman deserves, because he understands so well its value.  Failing to obtain his wish in India, he journeyed homeward, sound in mind and body, and determined to improve the comfort and condition of both, by a union with amiability, loveliness, and virtue, if in one individual he could find them all combined, and finding, could secure them for himself.  It might have been a year after his appearance in London, that he became acquainted with the family of Mr Graham, a lieutenant in the navy on half-pay, and the father of two children.  He was a widower, and not affluent.  His offspring were both daughters, and, at the time to which I allude, full grown, lovely women.  Their mother had been a governess previously to her marriage, and her subsequent days had been profitably employed in the education of her daughters; in preparing them, in fact, for the condition of life into which they would inevitably fall, if they were still unmarried at the dissolution of their father.  They were from infancy taught to expect their future means of living from their own honourable exertions, and they grew happier and better for the knowledge.  Mildred had retired to a town on the sea-coast, in which this family resided; and, shortly after his arrival, he first beheld the elder of the lieutenant’s children.  She was then in her nineteenth year, a lovely, graceful, and accomplished creature.  I cannot say that he was smitten at first sight, but it must have been