Being of a genial disposition and disposed to look most favourably upon his possessions and surrounding conditions, Mr. Delaplaine had come to be of the opinion that his lot in life was one in which improvement was not to be expected and scarcely to be desired.  He had been perfectly happy with his wife, and had no desire to marry another, who could not possibly equal her; and, having no children, he continually thanked his happy stars that he was free from the troubles and anxieties which were so often brought upon fathers by their sons and their daughters.

Into this quiet and self-satisfied life came, one morning, a great surprise in the shape of a beautiful young woman, who entered his office in Spanish Town, and who stated to him that she was the daughter of his only sister, and that she had come to live with him.  There was an elderly dame and a young man in company with the beautiful visitor, but Mr. Delaplaine took no note of them.  With his niece’s hands in his own, gazing into the face so like that young face in whose company he had grown from childhood to manhood, Mr. Delaplaine saw in a flash, that since the death of his wife until that moment he had never had the least reason to be content with the world or to be satisfied with his lot.  This was his sister’s child come to live with him!

When Mr. Delaplaine sufficiently recovered his ordinary good sense to understand that there were other things in this world besides the lovely niece who had so suddenly appeared before him, he remembered that she had a father, and many questions were asked and answered; and he was told who Dame Charter was, and why her son came with her.  Then the uncle and the niece walked into the garden, and there talked of Major Bonnet.  Little did Kate know upon this subject, and nothing could her uncle tell her; but in many and tender words she was assured that this was her home as long as she chose to live in it, and that it was the most fortunate thing in the world that Dame Charter had come with her and could stay with her.  Had this not been so, where could he have found such a guardian angel, such a chaperon, for this tender niece?  As for the young man, it was such rare good luck that he had been able to accompany the two ladies and give them his protection.  He was just the person, Mr. Delaplaine believed, who would be invaluable to him either on the plantation or in his counting-house.  In any case, here was their home; and here, too, was the home of his brother-in-law, Bonnet, whenever he chose to give up his strange fancy for the sea.  It was not now to be thought of that Kate or her father, or either one of them, should go back to Barbadoes to live with the impossible Madam Bonnet.

If her father’s vessel were in the harbour and he were here with them, or even if she had had good tidings from him, Kate Bonnet would have been a very happy girl, for her present abode was vastly different from any home she had ever known.  Her uncle’s house on the highlands beyond the town lay in a region of cooler breezes and more bracing air than that of Barbadoes.  Books and music and the general air of refinement recalled her early life with her mother, and with the exception of the anxiety about her father, there were no clouds in the bright blue skies of Kate Bonnet.  But this anxiety was a cloud, and it was spreading.