Paul kissed her hands, regarded her with an intensity of admiration, before which the eyes of Eve rose and fell, as if dazzled while meeting his looks, and yet unwilling to lose them; and then he reverted to the motive which had brought him to the library.
"My father--your father, that is now--"
"Cousin Jack!"
"Cousin Jack, if you will, has just made me a present, which is second only to the greater gift I received from your own excellent parent, yesterday, at the altar. See, dearest Eve, he has bestowed this lovely image of yourself on me; lovely, though still so far from the truth. And here is the miniature of my poor mother, also, to supply the place of the one carried away by the Arabs."
Eve gazed long and wistfully at the beautiful features of this image of her husband's mother. She traced in them that pensive thought, that winning kindness, that had first softened her heart towards Paul, and her lips trembled as she pressed the insensible glass against them.
"She must have been very handsome, Eve, and there is a look of melancholy tenderness in the face, that would seem almost to predict an unhappy blighting of the affections."
"And yet this young, ingenuous, faithful woman entered on the solemn engagement we have just made, Paul, with as many reasonable hopes of a bright future as we ourselves!"
"Not so, Eve--confidence and holy truth were wanting at the nuptials of my parents. When there is deception at the commencement of such a contract, it is not difficult to predict the end."
"I do not think, Paul, you ever deceived; that noble heart of yours is too generous!"
"If any thing can make a man worthy of such a love, dearest, it is the perfect and absorbing confidence with which your sex throw themselves on the justice and faith of ours. Did that spotless heart ever entertain a doubt of the worth of any living being on which It had set its affections?"