"Miss Effingham!--dearest Miss Effingham--Eve, my own Eve, what am I to infer from this generous warmth! Do not mislead me! I can bear my solitary misery, can brave the sufferings of an isolated existence; but I could not live under the disappointments of such a hope, a hope fairly quickened by a clear expression from your lips." "You teach me the importance of caution, Powis, and we will now return to your history, and to that confidence of which I shall not again prove a faithless repository. For the present at least, I beg that you will forget all else." "A command so kindly--so encouragingly given--do I offend, dearest Miss Effingham?" Eve, for the second time in her life, placed her own light arm and beautiful hand, through the arm of Paul, discovering a bewitching but modest reliance on his worth and truth, by the very manner in which she did this simple and every-day act, while she said more cheerfully-- "You forget the substance of the command, at the very moment you would have me suppose you most disposed to obey it." "Well, then, Miss Effingham, you shall be more implicitly minded. _Why_ my father left my mother so soon after their union, I never knew. It would seem that they lived together but a few months, though I have the proud consolation of knowing that my mother was blameless. For years I suffered the misery of doubt on a point that is ever the most tender with man, a distrust of his own mother; but all this has been happily, blessedly, cleared up, during my late visit to England. It is true that Lady Dunluce was my mother's sister, and as such might have been lenient to her failings; but a letter from my father, that was written only a month before my mother's death, leaves no doubt not only of her blamelessness as a wife, but bears ample testimony to the sweetness of her disposition. This letter is a precious document for a son to possess, 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.