had himself conquered in
Portugal and Spain.

The progress of the daughter amply repaid the father for his care, and
rewarded him for his solicitude: from the fond child of his affections
she had become the cherished companion of his society: her lively fancy
and agreeable conversation prevented solitude from degenerating into
loneliness: she diffused over their happy home that indefinable charm,
that spell of unceasing, yet soothing excitement, with which the
constant presence of an amiable, a lovely and accomplished woman
can alone imbue existence; without which life, indeed, under any
circumstances, is very dreary; and with which life, indeed, under any
circumstances, is never desperate.

There were moments, perhaps, when Major Ponsonby, who was not altogether
inexperienced in the great world, might sigh, that one so eminently
qualified as his daughter to shine even amid its splendour, should be
destined to a career so obscure as that which necessarily attended
the daughter of a Consul in a distant country. It sometimes cost the
father's heart a pang that his fair and fragrant flower should blush
unseen, and waste its perfume even in their lovely wilderness; and then,
with all a father's pride, and under all the influence of that worldly
ambition from which men are never free, he would form plans by which she
might visit, and visit with advantage, her native country. All the noble
cousins were thought over, under whose distinguished patronage she might
enter that great and distant world she was so capable of adorning; and
more than once he had endeavoured to intimate to Henrietta that it might
be better for them both that they should for a season part: but the
Consul's daughter shrunk from these whispers as some beautiful tree from
the murmurs of a rising storm. She could not conceive existence without
her father--the father under whose breath and sight she had ever lived
and flourished--the father to whom she was indebted, not only for
existence, but all the attributes that made life so pleasant; her sire,
her tutor, her constant company, her dear, dear friend. To part from
him, even though but for a season, and to gain splendour, appeared to
her pure, yet lively imagination, the most fatal of fortunes; a terrible
destiny--an awful dispensation. They had never parted, scarcely for an
hour; once, indeed, he had been absent for three days; he had sailed
with the fleet on public business to a neighbouring port; he ha