"If Mr. Powis were a more presuming gentleman than he is, ma'am--"
"You mean a less modest, Nanny," said Eve, perceiving that her nurse paused.
"Yes, ma'am--one that thought more of himself, and less of other people, is what I wish to say."
"And were this the case?"
"I might think he would find the heart to say what I know he feels."
"And did he find the heart to say what you know he feels, what does Ann Sidley think should be my answer?"
"Oh, ma'am, I know it would be just as it ought to be. I cannot repeat what ladies say on such occasions, but I know that it is what makes the hearts of the gentlemen leap for joy."
There are occasions in which woman can hardly dispense with the sympathy of woman. Eve loved her father most tenderly, had more than the usual confidence in him, for she had never known a mother; but had the present conversation been with him, notwithstanding all her reliance on his affection, her nature would have shrunk from pouring out her feelings as freely as she might have done with her other parent, had not death deprived her of such a blessing. Between our heroine and Ann Sidley, on the other hand, there existed a confidence of a nature so peculiar, as to require a word of explanation before we exhibit its effects. In all that related to physical wants, Ann had been a mother, or even more than a mother to Eve, and this alone had induced great personal dependence in the one, and a sort of supervisory care in the other, that had brought her to fancy she was responsible for the bodily health and well-doing of her charge. But this was not all. Nanny had been the repository of Eve's childish griefs, the confidant of her girlish secrets; and though the years of the latter soon caused her to be placed under the management of those who were better qualified to store her mind, this communication never ceased; the high-toned and educated young woman reverting with unabated affection, and a reliance that nothing could shake, to the long-tried tenderness of the being who had watched over her infancy. The effect of such an intimacy was often amusing; the one party bringing to the conferences, a mind filled with the knowledge suited to her sex and station, habits that had been formed in the best circles of christendom, and tastes that had been acquired in schools of high reputation; and the other, little more than her single-hearted love, a fidelity that ennobled her nature, and a simplicity that betokened perfect purity of thought Nor was this extraordinary confidence without its advantages to Eve; for, thrown so early among the artificial and calculating, it served to keep her own ingenuousness of character active, and prevented that cold, selfish, and unattractive sophistication, that mere women of fashion are apt to fall into, from their isolated and factitious mode of existence. When Eve, therefore, put the questions to her nurse, that have already been mentioned, it was more with a real wish to know how the latter would view a choice on which her own mind was so fully made up, than any silly trifling on a subject that engrossed so much of her best affections.
"But you have not told me, dear Nanny," she continued, "what you would have that answer be. Ought I, for instance, ever to quit my beloved father?"
"What necessity would there be for that, ma'am? Mr. Powis has no home of his own; and, for that matter, scarcely any country----"