Miss Effingham!"

Eve made no answer; but Paul fancied that he felt another gentle
pressure of the hand, which, until then, had rested so lightly on his
own arm, that he scarcely dared to move the latter, lest he might
lose the precious consciousness of its presence.

"I have other letters from my father to my mother," the young man
continued, "but none that are so cheering to my heart as this. From
their general tone, I cannot persuade myself that he ever truly loved
her. It is a cruel thing, Miss Effingham, for a man to deceive a
woman on a point like that!"

"Cruel, indeed," said Eve, firmly. "Death itself were preferable to
such a delusion."

"I think my father deceived himself as well as my mother; for there
is a strange incoherence and a want of distinctness in some of his
letters, that caused feelings, keen as mine naturally were on such a
subject, to distrust his affection from the first."

"Was your mother rich?" Eve asked innocently; for, an heiress
herself, her vigilance had early been directed to that great motive
of deception and dishonesty.

"Not in the least. She had little besides her high lineage, and her
beauty. I have her picture, which sufficiently proves the latter;
had, I ought rather to say, for it was her miniature, of which I was
robbed by the Arabs, as you may remember, and I have not seen it
since. In the way of money, my mother had barely the competency of a
gentlewoman; nothing more."

The pressure on Paul was more palpable, as spoke of the miniature;
and he ventured to touch his companion's arm, in order to give it a
surer hold of his own.

"Mr. Powis was not mercenary, then, and it is a great deal," said
Eve, speaking as if she were scarcely conscious that she spoke at
all.

"Mr. Powis!--He was every thing that was noble and disinterested. A
more generous, or a less selfish man, never existed than Francis
Powis."

"I thought you never knew your father personally!" exclaimed Eve in
surprise.

"Nor did I. But, you are in an error, in supposing that my father's
name was Powis, when it was Assheton."

Paul then explained the manner in which he had been adopted while
still a child, by a gentleman called Powis, whose name he had taken,
on finding himself deserted by his own natural parent, and to whose
fortune he had succeeded, on the death of his voluntary protector.

"I bore the name of Assheton until Mr. Powis took me to France, when
he advised me to assume his own, which I