Chapter 1

"Good morrow, coz. Good morrow, sweet Hero."

SHAKSPEARE.

When Mr. Effingham determined to return home, he sent orders to his
agent to prepare his town-house in New-York for his reception,
intending to pass a month or two in it, then to repair to Washington
for a few weeks, at the close of its season, and to visit his country
residence when the spring should fairly open. Accordingly, Eve now
found herself at the head of one of the largest establishments, in
the largest American town, within an hour after she had landed from
the ship. Fortunately for her, however, her father was too just to
consider a wife, or a daughter, a mere upper servant, and he rightly
judged that a liberal portion of his income should be assigned to the
procuring of that higher quality of domestic service, which can alone
relieve the mistress of a household from a burthen so heavy to be
borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on a
single pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the
ostentatious folly of one contended with the ostentatious folly of
another a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and
system into a family for a twelvemonth, by commanding the time and
knowledge of those whose study they had been, and who would be
willing to devote themselves to such objects, and then permit their
wives and daughters to return to the drudgery to which the sex seems
doomed in this country, he first bethought him of the wants of social
life before he aspired to its parade. A man of the world, Mr.
Effingham possessed the requisite knowledge, and a man of justice,
the requisite fairness, to permit those who depended on him so much
for their happiness, to share equitably in the good things that
Providence had so liberally bestowed on himself. In other words, he
made two people comfortable, by paying a generous price for a
housekeeper; his daughter, in the first place, by releasing her from
cares that, necessarily, formed no more a part of her duties than it
would be a part of her duty to sweep the pavement before the door;
and, in the next place, a very respectable woman who was glad to
obtain so good a home on so easy terms. To this simple and just
expedient, Eve was indebted for being at the head of one of the
quietest, most truly elegant, and best, ordered establishments in
America, with no other demands on her time than that which was
necessary to issue a few orders in the morning, and to examine a few
accounts once a week.

One of the first and the most acceptable of the visits that Eve
received, was from her cousin, Grace Van Cortlandt, who was in the
country at the moment of her arrival, but who hurried back to town to
meet her old school-fellow and kinswoman, the