"This may be true, Sir George Templemore, and for a long time it escaped me too. I have only learned to prize her as she ought to be prized by an intimate acquaintance; hour by hour, as it might be. But even you must have observed how quick and intuitively my cousin and Mrs. Bloomfield have understood each other to-day; how much extensive reading, and, what polished tastes they have both shown, and all so truly feminine! Mrs. Bloomfield is a remarkable woman, but she loves these exhibitions, for she knows she excels in them. Not so with Eve Effingham, who, while she so thoroughly enjoys every thing intellectual, is content, always, to seem so simple. Now, it happens, that the conversation turned once to-day on a subject that my cousin, no later than yesterday, fully explained to me, at my own earnest request; and I observed that, while she joined so naturally with Mrs. Bloomfield in adding to our pleasure, she kept back half what she knew, lest she might seem to surpass her friend. No--no--no--there is not such another woman as Eve Effingham in this world!" "So keen a perception of excellence in others, denotes an equal excellence in yourself." "I know my own great inferiority now, and no kindness of yours, Sir George Templemore, can ever persuade me into a better opinion of myself. Eve has travelled, seen much in Europe that does not exist here, and, instead of passing her youth in girlish trifling, has treated the minutes as if they were all precious, as she well knew them to be." "If Europe, then, does indeed possess these advantages, why not yourself visit it, dearest Miss Van Cortlandt?" "I--I a Hajji!" cried Grace with childish pleasure, though her colour heightened, and, for a moment, Eve and her superiority was forgotten.