"Not in the least. She had little besides her high lineage, and her beauty. I have her picture, which sufficiently proves the latter; had, I ought rather to say, for it was her miniature, of which I was robbed by the Arabs, as you may remember, and I have not seen it since. In the way of money, my mother had barely the competency of a gentlewoman; nothing more." The pressure on Paul was more palpable, as spoke of the miniature; and he ventured to touch his companion's arm, in order to give it a surer hold of his own. "Mr. Powis was not mercenary, then, and it is a great deal," said Eve, speaking as if she were scarcely conscious that she spoke at all. "Mr. Powis!--He was every thing that was noble and disinterested. A more generous, or a less selfish man, never existed than Francis Powis." "I thought you never knew your father personally!" exclaimed Eve in surprise. "Nor did I. But, you are in an error, in supposing that my father's name was Powis, when it was Assheton." Paul then explained the manner in which he had been adopted while still a child, by a gentleman called Powis, whose name he had taken, on finding himself deserted by his own natural parent, and to whose fortune he had succeeded, on the death of his voluntary protector. "I bore the name of Assheton until Mr. Powis took me to France, when he advised me to assume his own, which I did the more readily, as he thought he had ascertained that my father was dead, and that he had bequeathed the whole of a very considerable estate to his nephews and nieces, making no allusion to me in his will, and seemingly anxious even to deny his marriage; at least, he passed among his acquaintances for a bachelor to his dying day." "There is something so unusual and inexplicable in all this, Mr. Powis, that it strikes me you have been to blame, in not inquiring more closely into the circumstances than, by your own account I should think had been done." "For a long time, for many bitter years, I was afraid to inquire, lest I should learn something injurious to a mother's name. Then there was the arduous and confined service of my profession, which kept me in distant seas: and the last journey and painful indisposition of my excellent benefactor, prevented even the wish to inquire after my own family. The offended pride of Mr. Powis, who was justly hurt at the cavalier manner in which my father's relatives met his advances, aided in alienating me from that portion of my relatives, and put a stop to all additional proffers of intercourse from me. They even affected to doubt the fact that my father had ever married." "But of that you had proof?" Eve earnestly asked. "Unanswerable. My aunt Dunluce was present at the ceremony, and I possess the certificate given to my mother by the clergyman who officiated. Is it not strange, Miss Effingham, that with all these circumstances in favour of my legitimacy, even Lady Dunluce and her family, until lately, had doubts of the fact."