serves this from you, but I never knew my father,
you will remember."

"I am an unworthy confidant, to have forgotten this so soon. Poor
Powis, you were, indeed, unhappy!"

"He had parted from my mother before my birth and either died soon
after, or has never deemed his child of sufficient worth to make him
the subject of interest sufficient to excite a single inquiry into
his fate."

"Then he never knew that child!" burst from Eve, with a fervour and
frankness, that set all reserves, whether of womanly training, or of
natural timidity, at defiance.

"Miss Effingham!--dearest Miss Effingham--Eve, my own Eve, what am I
to infer from this generous warmth! Do not mislead me! I can bear my
solitary misery, can brave the sufferings of an isolated existence;
but I could not live under the disappointments of such a hope, a hope
fairly quickened by a clear expression from your lips."

"You teach me the importance of caution, Powis, and we will now
return to your history, and to that confidence of which I shall not
again prove a faithless repository. For the present at least, I beg
that you will forget all else."

"A command so kindly--so encouragingly given--do I offend, dearest
Miss Effingham?" Eve, for the second time in her life, placed her own
light arm and beautiful hand, through the arm of Paul, discovering a
bewitching but modest reliance on his worth and truth, by the very
manner in which she did this simple and every-day act, while she said
more cheerfully--

"You forget the substance of the command, at the very moment you
would have me suppose you most disposed to obey it."

"Well, then, Miss Effingham, you shall be more implicitly minded.
_Why_ my father left my mother so soon after their union, I never
knew. It would seem that they lived together but a few months, though
I have the proud consolation of knowing that my mother was blameless.
For years I suffered the misery of doubt on a point that is ever the
most tender with man, a distrust of his own mother; but all this has
been happily, blessedly, cleared up, during my late visit to England.
It is true that Lady Dunluce was my mother's sister, and as such
might have been lenient to her failings; but a letter from my father,
that was written only a month before my mother's death, leaves no
doubt not only of her blamelessness as a wife, but bears ample
testimony to the sweetness of her disposition. This letter is a
precious document for a son to possess,