"Your national partialities have made you an unjust judge towards others, Mr. Powis." Eve interrupted him by saying, though the earnestness and passion with which the young man uttered his feelings, made music to her ears: "what had a young, frightened, half-educated American girl to boast of, when put in competition with the finished women of Austria?"
"Her surpassing beauty, her unconscious superiority, her attainments, her trembling simplicity and modesty and her meek purity of mind. All these did you possess, not only in my eyes, but in those of others; for these are subjects on which I dwelt too fondly to be mistaken."
A rocket passed near them at the moment, and, while both were too much occupied by the discourse to heed the interruption, its transient light enabled Paul to see the flushed cheeks and tearful eyes of Eve, as the latter were turned on him, in a grateful pleasure, that his ardent praises extorted from her, in despite of all her struggles for self-command.
"We will leave to others this comparison, Mr. Powis," she said, "and confine ourselves to less doubtful subjects."
"If I am then to speak only of that which is beyond all question, I shall speak chiefly of my long cherished, devoted, unceasing love. I adored you at Vienna, Miss Effingham, though it was at a distance, as one might worship the sun; for, while your excellent father admitted me to his society, and I even think honoured me with some portion of his esteem, I had but little opportunity to ascertain the value of the jewel that was contained in so beautiful a casket; but when we met the following summer in Switzerland, I first began truly to love. Then I learned the justness of thought, the beautiful candour, the perfectly feminine delicacy of your mind; and, although I will not say that these qualities were not enhanced in the eyes of so young a man, by the extreme beauty of their possessor, I will say that, as weighed against each other, I could a thousand times prefer the former to the latter, unequalled as the latter almost is, even among your own beautiful sex."
"This is presenting flattery in its most seductive form, Powis."
"Perhaps my incoherent and abrupt manner of explaining myself deserves a rebuke; though nothing can be farther from my intentions than to seem to flatter or in any manner to exaggerate. I intend merely to give a faithful history of the state of my feelings, and of the progress of my love."
Eve smiled faintly, but very sweetly, as Paul would have thought, had the obscurity permitted more than a dim view of her lovely countenance.
"Ought I to listen to such praises, Mr. Powis," she asked; "praises which only contribute to a self-esteem that is too great already?"
"No one but yourself would say this; but your question does, indeed, remind me of the indiscretion that I have fallen into, by losing that command of my feelings, in which I have so long exulted. No man should make a woman the confidant of his attachment, until he is fully prepared to accompany the declaration with an offer of his hand;--and such is not my condition."