The mother of Ella--a half sister to the elder-Younker--died when she was very young, leaving her to the care of a kind and indulgent father, who, having no other child, lavished on her his whole affections. At the demise of his wife, Barnwell was a prosperous, if not wealthy merchant, in one of the eastern cities of Virginia; and knowing the instability of wealth, together with his desire to fit his daughter for any station in society, he spared no expense necessary to educate her in all the different branches of English usually studied by a female. To this was added drawing, needle-work, music and dancing; and as Ella proved by no means a backward scholar in whatever she undertook, she was, at the age of fifteen, to use a familiar phrase, turned out an accomplished young lady. But alas! she had been qualified for a station which fate seemed determined not to let her occupy; for just at this important period of her life, her father became involved in an unfortunate speculation, that ended in ruin, dishonor, and his own bodily confinement in prison for debts he could never discharge. Naturally high spirited and proud, this misfortune and persecution proved too much for his philosophy--and what was more, his reason--and in a state of mental derangement, he one night hung himself to the bars of his prison window--leaving his daughter at the age we have named, a poor, unprotected, we might almost add friendless, orphan; for moneyless and friendless are too often synonymous terms, as poor Ella soon learned to her mortification and sorrow. Ella Barnwell, the young, the beautiful, and accomplished heiress, was a very different personage from poor Ella Barnwell the bankrupt's daughter; and those who had fawned upon and flattered and courted the one, now saw proper to pass the other by in silent contempt. It was a hard, a very hard lesson for one at the tender age of Ella, who had been petted and pampered all her life, and taught by her own simplicity of heart to look upon all pretenders as real friends--it was a hard lesson, we say, for one of her years, to be forced at one bold stroke to learn the world, and see her happy, artless dreams vanish like froth from the foaming cup; but if hard, it was salutary--at least with her; and instead of blasting in the bud, as it might have done a frailer flower, it set her reason to work, destroyed the romantic sentimentalism usually attached to females of that excitable age, taught her to rely more upon herself, and less upon others, more upon actions and less upon words, and, in short, made a strong minded woman of her at once. Yet this was not accomplished without many a heart-rending pang, as the briny tears of chagrin, disappointment, and almost hopeless destitution, that nightly chased each other down the pale cheeks of Ella Barnwell to the pillow which supported her feverish head, for weeks, and even months after the death of her father, could well attest.