"If I have made any seeming mystery, as to the place of my birth, it has been involuntary on my part, Miss Effingham, so far as you, at least, have been concerned. I may not have thought myself authorized to introduce my own history into our little discussions, but I am not conscious of aiming at any unusual concealments. At Vienna, and in Switzerland, we met as travellers; and now that you appear disposed to accuse me of concealment, I may retort, and say that, neither you nor your father ever expressly stated in my presence that you were Americans." "Was that necessary, Mr. Powis?" "Perhaps not; and I am wrong to draw a comparison between my own insignificance, and the éclat that attended you and your movements." "Nay," interrupted Eve, "do not misconceive me. My father felt an interest in you, quite naturally, after what had occurred on the lake of Lucerne, and I believe he was desirous of making you out a countryman,--a pleasure that he has at length received." "To own the truth, I was never quite certain, until my last visit to England, on which side of the Atlantic I was actually born, and to this uncertainty, perhaps, may be attributed some of that cosmopolitism to which I made so many high pretensions in our late passage." "Not know where you were born!" exclaimed Eve, with an involuntary haste, that she immediately repented. "This, no doubt, sounds odd to you, Miss Effingham, who have always been the pride and solace of a most affectionate father, but it has never been my good fortune to know either parent. My mother, who was the sister of Ducie's mother, died at my birth, and the loss of my father even preceded hers. I may be said to have been born an orphan." Eve, for the first time in her life, had taken his arm, and the young man felt the gentle pressure of her little hand, as she permitted this expression of sympathy to escape her, at a moment she found so intensely interesting to herself. "It was, indeed, a misfortune, Mr. Powis, and I fear you were put into the navy through the want of those who would feel a natural concern in your welfare." "The navy was my own choice; partly, I think, from a certain love of adventure, and quite as much, perhaps, with a wish to settle the question of my birth-place, practically at least, by enlisting in the service of the one that I first knew, and certainly best loved." "But of that birth-place, I understand there is now no doubt?" said Eve, with more interest than she was herself conscious of betraying. "None whatever; I am a native of Philadelphia; that point was conclusively settled in my late visit to my aunt, Lady Dunluce, who was present at my birth." "Is Lady Dunluce also an American?"