"And why of me particularly, my good Nanny?" returned Eve, smiling in the face of her old nurse as sweetly as the infant smiles in its moments of tenderness and recollection. "Why so much of me, my excellent Ann?--are there not others too, worthy of your care? my beloved father--your own good self--Mademoiselle Viefville--cousin Jack--and--" the warm colour deepened on the cheek of the beautiful girl, she scarcely knew why herself--"and many others in the vessel, that one, kind as you, might think of, I should hope, when your thoughts become apprehensions, and your wishes prayers." "There are many precious souls in the ship, ma'am, out of all question; and I'm sure no one wishes them all safe on land again more than myself; but it seems to me, no one among them all is so much loved as you." Eve leaned forward playfully, and drawing her old nurse towards her, kissed her cheek, while her own eyes glistened, and then she laid her flushed cheek on that bosom which had so frequently been its pillow before. After remaining a minute in this affectionate attitude, she rose and inquired if her nurse had been on deck. "I go every half-hour, Miss Eve; for I feel it as much my duty to watch over you here, as when I had you all to myself in the cradle. I do not think your father sleeps a great deal to-night, and several of the gentlemen in the other cabins remain dressed; they ask me how you spend the time in this tempest, whenever I pass their state-room doors." Eve's colour deepened, and Ann Sidley thought she had never seen her child more beautiful, as the bright luxuriant golden hair, which had strayed from the confinement of the cap, fell on the warm cheek, and rendered eyes that were always full of feeling, softer and more brilliant even than common. "They conceal their uneasiness for themselves under an affected concern for me, my good Nanny," she said hurriedly; "and your own affection makes you an easy dupe to the artifice." "It may be so, ma'am, for I know but little of the ways of the world. It is fearful, is it not, Miss Eve, to think that we are in a ship, so far from any land, whirling along over the bottom as fast as a horse could plunge?" "The danger is not exactly of that nature, perhaps, Nanny." "There is a bottom to the ocean, is there not? I have heard some maintain there is no bottom to the sea--and that would make the danger so much greater. I think, if I felt certain that the bottom was not very deep, and there was only a rock to be seen now and then, I should not find it so very dreadful." Eve laughed like a child, and the contrast between the sweet simplicity of her looks, her manners, and her more cultivated intellect, and the matronly appearance of the less instructed Ann, made one of those pictures in which the superiority of mind over all other things becomes most apparent.