ny," she continued, "what _you_
would have that answer be. Ought I, for instance, ever to quit my
beloved father?"

"What necessity would there be for that, ma'am? Mr. Powis has no home
of his own; and, for that matter, scarcely any country----"

"How can you know this, Nanny?" demanded Eve, with the jealous
sensitiveness of a young love.

"Why, Miss Eve, his man says this much, and he has lived with him
long enough to know it, if he had a home. Now, I seldom sleep without
looking back at the day, and often have my thoughts turned to Sir
George Temple more and Mr. Powis; and when I have remembered that the
first had a house and a home, and that the last had neither, it has
always seemed to me that _he_ ought to be the one."

"And then, in all this matter, you have thought of convenience, and
what might be agreeable to others, rather than of me."

"Miss Eve!"

"Nay, dearest Nanny, forgive me; I know your last thought, in every
thing, is for yourself. But surely, the mere circumstance that he had
no home ought not to be a sufficient reason for selecting any man,
for a husband. With most women it would be an objection."

"I pretend to know very little of these feelings, Miss Eve. I have
been wooed, I acknowledge; and once I do think I might have been
tempted to marry, had it not been for a particular circumstance."

"You! You marry, Ann Sidley!" exclaimed Eve, to whom the bare idea
seemed as odd and unnatural, as that her own father should forget her
mother, and take a second wife. "This is altogether new, and I should
be glad to know what the lucky circumstance was, which prevented
what, to me, might have proved so great a calamity."

"Why, ma'am, I said to myself, what does a woman do, who marries? She
vows to quit all else to go with her husband, and to love him before
father and mother, and all other living beings on earth--is it not
so, Miss Eve?"

"I believe it is so, indeed, Nanny--nay, I am quite certain it is
so," Eve answered, the colour deepening on her cheek, as she gave
this opinion to her old nurse, with the inward consciousness that she
had just experienced some of the happiest moments of her life,
through the admission of a passion that thus overshadowed all the
natural affections. "It is, truly? as you say."

"Well, ma'am, I investigated my feelings, I believe they call it, and
after a proper trial, I found that I loved you so much better than
any one else, that I could not, in conscience, ma