The father of Ella Corbyn, an officer in the British army, was disabled in action during the Peninsular war, and after the peace of 1815, retired to the continent, where he married the beautiful Katrina Klaus, supported himself and Katrina many years on his half-pay, until about the period of Ella’s birth, when he and the half-pay departed together. His daughter, of course, had no recollection of him, and never possessed more than the one single article of his property, a miniature on ivory, of a lady, young, but by no means beautiful. She never knew who it was; her mother could not tell her when she first gave it into little Ella’s tiny hands, but supposed it was some one of Mr. Corbyn’s family, probably a sister—and so the matter rested for the while. The neighbors could tell her scarcely any thing of her father; they had seen him when he first came into the neighborhood, but his marriage with his beautiful wife, and subsequent removal to a neighboring village, followed so quickly, that they could give no account of him, nor further description than that of his personal appearance. Of the circumstances attending his death all they knew was, that two strangers stopped one afternoon at the public-house, that Mr. Corbyn spent part of the evening with them and went home early; the next morning he was shot in a duel, but the old captain who stood his friend in the affair, thought it no business of his to inquire what the difficulty was about. He left no property of any value, and his widow supported herself and Ella on her little patrimony four years longer, when she, too, died and left the child a helpless orphan. This was the time for her uncle, the priest, to come to her assistance. He took her into his care and provided for her early education by consigning her to the Sisters of Charity in Cologne. Here she remained five years; and when her good uncle, deeming that he could, with better justice to his finances, superintend her further progress at home, took her back, she displayed so much ability and judgment that she soon reigned, a little queen, over his modest household.