"I would I knew how to take this charge, Miss Effingham!--To be a seaman is not always a recommendation with the polished, intelligent, and refined." "But when one is polished, intelligent, and refined, to be a seaman is to add one other particular and useful branch of knowledge to those which are more familiar. I feel certain Captain Truck will be in good hands, and now I will go and do my devoirs to my own especial charges, the ladies." Eve bowed as she passed the young man, and she left the room with as much haste as at all became her. Paul stood motionless quite a minute after she had vanished, nor did he awaken from his reverie, until aroused by an appeal from Captain Truck, to sustain him, in some of his matter-of-fact opinions concerning England, against the visionary and bookish notions of Mr. Howel. "Who is this Mr. Powis?" asked Mrs. Bloomfield of Eve, when the latter appeared in her dressing-room, with an unusual impatience of manner. "You know, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, that he was our fellow-passenger in the Montauk, and that he was of infinite service to us, in escaping from the Arabs." "All this I know, certainly; but he is a European, is he not?" Eve scarcely ever felt more embarrassed than in answering this simple question. "I believe not; at least, I think not; we thought so when we met him in Europe, and even until quite lately; but he has avowed himself a countryman of our own, since his arrival at Templeton." "Has he been here long?" "We found him in the village on reaching home. He was from Canada, and has been in waiting for his cousin, Captain Ducie, who came with you." "His cousin!--He has English cousins, then! Mr. Ducie kept this to himself, with true English reserve. Captain Truck whispered something of the latter's having taken out one of his passengers, _the_ Mr. Powis. the hero of the rocks, but I did not know of his having found his way back to our--to his country. Is he as agreeable as Sir George Templemore?" "Nay, Mrs. Bloomfield, I must leave you to judge of that for yourself. I think them both agreeable men; but there is so much caprice in a woman's tastes, that I decline thinking for others." "He is a seaman, I believe," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, with an abstracted manner--"he _must_ have been, to have manoeuvred and managed as I have been told he did. Powis--Powis--that is not one of our names, neither--I should think he must be from the south." Here Eve's habitual truth and dignity of mind did her good service, and prevented any further betrayal of embarrassment. "We do not know his family," she steadily answered. "That he is a gentleman, we see; but of his origin and connections he never speaks." "His profession would have given him the notions of a gentleman, for he was in the navy I have heard, although I had thought it the British navy. I do not know of any Powises in Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or Richmond, or Charleston; he must surely be from the interior."