eager to get to Ion and begin life in earnest. Isn't it time, seeing I
have been a married man for nearly five months? But why that sigh, love?"

"O Edward, are you not sorry you are married? Are you not sometimes very
much ashamed of me?" she asked, her cheek burning hotly and the downcast
eyes filling with tears.

"Ashamed of you, Zoe? Why, darling, you are my heart's best treasure," he
said, drawing her closer to his side, and touching his lips to her
forehead. "What has put so absurd an idea into your head?"

"I know so little, so very little compared with your mother and sisters,"
she sighed. "I'm finding it out more and more every day, as I hear them
talk among themselves and to other people."

"But you are younger than any of them, a very great deal younger than
mamma, and will have time to catch up to them."

"But I'm a married woman and so can't go to school any more. Ah," with
another and very heavy sigh, "I wish papa hadn't been quite so indulgent,
or that I'd had sense enough not to take advantage of it to the neglect of
my studies!"

"No, I suppose it would hardly do to send you to school, even if I could
spare you--which I can't," he returned laughingly, "but there is a
possibility of studying at home, under a governess or tutor. What do you
say to offering yourself as a pupil to grandpa?"

"Oh, no, no! I'm sure he can be very stern upon occasion. I've seen it in
his eyes when I've made a foolish remark that he didn't approve, and I