"But you, too, speak several, my dear Miss Van Cortlandt."
"Yes," said Grace, bitterly, "I speak them, as the parrot repeats words that he does not understand. But Eve Effingham has used these languages as means, and she does not tell you merely what such a phrase or idiom signifies, but what the greatest writers have thought and written."
"No one has a more profound respect for your cousin than myself, Miss Van Cortlandt, but justice to you requires that I should say her great superiority over yourself has escaped me."
"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.
Certainly Sir George Templemore did not come out on the lake that day with any expectation of offering his baronetcy, his fair estate, with his hand, to this artless, half-educated, provincial, but beautiful girl. For a long time he had been debating with himself the propriety of such a step, and it is probable that, at some later period, he would have sought an occasion, had not one now so opportunely offered, notwithstanding all his doubts and reasonings with himself. If the "woman who hesitates is lost," it is equally true that the man who pretends to set up his reason alone against beauty, is certain to find that sense is less powerful than the senses. Had Grace Van Cortlandt been more sophisticated, less natural, her beauty might have failed to make this conquest; but the baronet found a charm in her naiveté, that was singularly winning to the feelings of a man of the world. Eve had first attracted him by the same quality; the early education of American females being less constrained and artificial than that of the English; but in Eve he found a mental training and acquisitions that left the quality less conspicuous, perhaps, than in her scarcely less beautiful cousin; though, had Eve met his admiration with any thing like sympathy, her power over him would not have been easily weakened. As it was, Grace had been gradually winding herself around his affections, and he now poured out his love, in a language that her unpractised and already favourably disposed feelings had no means of withstanding. A very few minutes were allowed to them, before the summons to the boat; but when this summons came, Grace rejoined the party, elevated in her own good opinion, as happy as a cloudless future could make her and without another thought of the immeasurable superiority of her cousin.
By a singular coincidence, while the baronet and Grace were thus engaged on one part of the shore, Eve was the subject of a similar proffer of connecting herself for life, on another. She had left the circle, attended by Paul, her father, and Aristabulus; but no sooner had they reached the margin of the water, than the two former were called away by Captain Truck, to settle some controverted point between the latter and the commodore. By this unlooked-for desertion, Eve found herself alone with Mr. Bragg.