to the
suggestion of Don Gregorio, his aid-de-camp; and having lighted fresh
segars, they mounted their horses, and rode back to San Blas.

CHAPTER III.

A lady
So fair, and fastened to an empery,
Would make the great'st king double.

CYMBELINE.

The family of Don Gaspar de Luna consisted of his wife, whom we have
already noticed as a native of Mexico, and two daughters, Antonia and
Carlota, who were rather pretty for Creole girls, and, like the
generality of Creoles, especially when one half is Spanish, extremely
ignorant and vulgar in their language and manners; the last trait being
somewhat characteristic of the Spanish-American women, if we may believe
travellers, to which I may add my own somewhat limited observation. They
are, however, by way of amends, more civilized and sociable in their
behaviour to strangers, and much more intelligent, than the men.

The lovely niece of the governor, the orphan daughter of his brother,
made up the list of his family. As we have no great concern with the old
lady and her two daughters, we have mentioned them first, in order to
get them out of our way; but as the fair Isabella will make some figure
in our pages, we can do no less than devote a chapter, or part of a
chapter, to giving some account and description of her, more
particularly as she differs, _toto coelo_, from her cousins, morally,
and, in many respects, physically.

Isabella de Luna was the daughter of Signor Anastasio de Luna, the only
brother of Don Gaspar. He was an eminent merchant of Cadiz, who, having
found it necessary to go to London on business, had afterwards found it
equally necessary to remain there for some time, to attend to his
mercantile affairs. Here he became acquainted with a Miss Campbell, a
Scotch lady of about thirty years of age, very beautiful, but poor. Her
father had been taken prisoner at the defeat of the Pretender's army at
Culloden, in which army he was an officer, and immediately executed
without a trial, by the blood-thirsty and infamous Duke of Cumberland.
Her mother died of grief a few months afterwards, leaving her an infant,
and the sole surviving member of a proscribed and ruined family. She was
taken, from mere compassion, by a distant relation of her father, and
carefully brought up in the Protestant faith, her parents having been
Catholics.

When about twenty years old, she acco