Chapter 22 - Page 2

'fourteen millions of freemen.'"

"Are we to attribute the mystery that so long hung over your birth-
place, to this fact," Eve asked, a little pointedly.

"If I have made any seeming mystery, as to the place of my birth, it
has been involuntary on my part, Miss Effingham, so far as you, at
least, have been concerned. I may not have thought myself authorized
to introduce my own history into our little discussions, but I am not
conscious of aiming at any unusual concealments. At Vienna, and in
Switzerland, we met as travellers; and now that you appear disposed
to accuse me of concealment, I may retort, and say that, neither you
nor your father ever expressly stated in my presence that you were
Americans."

"Was that necessary, Mr. Powis?"

"Perhaps not; and I am wrong to draw a comparison between my own
insignificance, and the éclat that attended you and your movements."

"Nay," interrupted Eve, "do not misconceive me. My father felt an
interest in you, quite naturally, after what had occurred on the lake
of Lucerne, and I believe he was desirous of making you out a
countryman,--a pleasure that he has at length received."

"To own the truth, I was never quite certain, until my last visit to
England, on which side of the Atlantic I was actually born, and to
this uncertainty, perhaps, may be attributed some of that
cosmopolitism to which I made so many high pretensions in our late
passage."

"Not know where you were born!" exclaimed Eve, with an involuntary
haste, that she immediately repented.

"This, no doubt, sounds odd to you, Miss Effingham, who have always
been the pride and solace of a most affectionate father, but it has
never been my good fortune to know either parent. My mother, who was
the sister of Ducie's mother, died at my birth, and the loss of my
father even preceded hers. I may be said to have been born an
orphan."

Eve, for the first time in her life, had taken his arm, and the young
man felt the gentle pressure of her little hand, as she permitted
this expression of sympathy to escape her, at a moment she found so
intensely interesting to herself.

"It was, indeed, a misfortune, Mr. Powis, and I fear you were put
into the navy through the want of those who would feel a natural
concern in your welfare."

"The navy was my own choice; partly, I think, from a certain love of
adventure, and quite as much, perhaps, with a wish to settle the
question of my birth-place, practically at least, by enlisting in the
service of the one that I first knew, and certainly best loved."

"But of that birth-place, I understand