"My kind and good Nanny!" said Eve, taking her old nurse in her arms, their tears mingling in silence for near a minute. "You have seen your child enter on the last of her great earthly engagements, Nanny, and I know you pray that they may prove happy."
"I do--I do--I do--ma'am--madam--Miss Eve--what am I to call you in future, ma'am?"
"Call me Miss Eve, as you have done since my childhood, dearest Nanny." Nanny received this permission with delight, and twenty times that morning she availed herself of the permission; and she continued to use the term until, two years later, she danced a miniature Eve on her knee, as she had done its mother before her, when matronly rank began silently to assert its rights, and our present bride became Mrs. Effingham.
"I shall not quit you, ma'am, now that you are married?" Ann Sidley timidly asked; for, although she could scarcely think such an event within the bounds of probability, and Eve had already more than once assured her of the contrary with her own tongue, still did she love to have assurance made doubly sure. "I hope nothing will ever happen to make me quit you, ma'am?"
"Nothing of that sort, with my consent, ever shall happen, my excellent Nanny. And now that Annette is about to get married, I shall have more than the usual necessity for your services."
"And Mamerzelle, ma'am?" inquired Nanny, with sparkling eyes; "I suppose she, too, will return to her own country, now you know every thing, and have no farther occasion for her?"
"Mademoiselle Viefville will return to France in the autumn, but it will be with us all; for my dear father, cousin Jack, my husband--" Eve blushed as she pronounced the novel word--"and myself, not forgetting you my old nurse, will all sail for England, with Sir George and Lady Templemore, on our way to Italy, the first week in October."
"I care not, ma'am, so that I go with you. I would rather we did not live in a country where I cannot understand all that the people say to you, but wherever you are will be my earthly paradise."
Eve kissed the true-hearted woman, and, Annette entering, she changed her dress.
The two brides met at the head of the great stairs, on their way back to the drawing-room. Eve was a little in advance, but, with a half-concealed smile, she gave way to Grace, curtsying gravely, and saying--