In America it is from the breast of a poor slave that a child is taken.

In India it is from the wife, and from under the palace, of a splendid proconsul.
The experience of this grief made Newcome's naturally kind heart only the more tender, and hence he had a weakness for children which made him the laughing-stock of old maids, old bachelors, and sensible persons; but the darling of all nurseries, to whose little inhabitants he was uniformly kind: were they the collectors' progeny in their palanquins, or the sergeants' children tumbling about the cantonment, or the dusky little heathens in the huts of his servants round his gate.
It is known that there is no part of the world where ladies are more fascinating than in British India.

Perhaps the warmth of the sun kindles flames in the hearts of both sexes, which would probably beat quite coolly in their native air: else why should Miss Brown be engaged ten days after her landing at Calcutta?
or why should Miss Smith have half a dozen proposals before she has been a week at the station?
And it is not only bachelors on whom the young ladies confer their affections; they will take widowers without any difficulty; and a man so generally liked as Major Newcome, with such a good character, with a private fortune of his own, so chivalrous, generous, good-looking, eligible in a word, you may be sure would have found a wife easily enough, had he any mind for replacing the late Mrs.Casey.
The Colonel, as has been stated, had an Indian chum or companion, with whom he shared his lodgings; and from many jocular remarks of this latter gentleman (who loved good jokes, and uttered not a few) I could gather that the honest widower Colonel Newcome had been often tempted to alter his condition, and that the Indian ladies had tried numberless attacks upon his bereaved heart, and devised endless schemes of carrying it by assault, treason, or other mode of capture.

Mrs.Casey (his defunct wife) had overcome it by sheer pity and helplessness.

He had found her so friendless, that he took her into the vacant place, and installed her there as he would have received a traveller into his bungalow.