she know--what social opportunities had been hers? How would she fit
with an exalted station?

Yet Philip had said that she could take her place anywhere with grace and
dignity; and surely Philip knew. If she were gauche or crude in manners,
he would not have cared for her; if she were not intelligent, he would
scarcely have loved her. Of course she had read French and English to
some purpose; she could speak Spanish--her grandfather had taught her
that; she understood Italian fairly--she had read it aloud on Sunday
evenings with the Chevalier. Then there were Corneille, Shakespeare,
Petrarch, Cervantes--she had read them all; and even Wace, the old Norman
trouvere, whose Roman de Rou she knew almost by heart. Was she so very
ignorant?

There was only one thing to do: she must interest herself in what
interested Philip; she must read what he read; she must study naval
history; she must learn every little thing about a ship of war. Then
Philip would be able to talk with her of all he did at sea, and she would
understand.

When, a few days ago, she had said to him that she did not know how she
was going to be all that his wife ought to be, he had answered her: "All
I ask is that you be your own sweet self, for it is just you that I want,
you with your own thoughts and imaginings, and not a Guida who has
dropped her own way of looking at things to take on some one else's--even
mine. It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who
are clever never think of trying to be."

Was Philip right? Was she really, in some way, a little bit clever? She
would like to believe so, for then she would be a better companion for