"But you will accommodate yourself to any station. My dear, you are
young, and know so little about this world, which is such a bugbear to
you. Why, there is very little that will be greatly unlike this. At
first you might be a little bewildered, but I shall be by you all the
time, and you shall feel and fear nothing, and gradually you will learn
what little you need to know; and most of all, you will know yourself
the best and the loveliest of women. Dear Ivy, I would not part with
your sweet, unconscious simplicity for all the accomplishments and
acquired elegancies of the finest lady in the world." (That's what men
always say.) "You are not ignorant of anything you ought to know, and
your ignorance of the world is an additional charm to one who knows so
much of its wickedness as I. But we will not talk of it. There is no
need. This shall be our home, and here the world will not trouble us."

"And I cannot give up my dear father and mother. They are not like you
and your friends"--

"They are my friends, and valued and dear to me, and dearer still they
shall be as the parents of my dear little wife"--

"I was going to say"--

"But you shall not say it. I utterly forbid you ever to mention it
again. You are mine, all my own. Your friends are my friends, your
honor my honor, your happiness my happiness henceforth; and what God
joins together let not man or woman put asunder."

"Ah!" whispered Ivy, faintly; for she was yielding, and just beginning
to receive the sense of great and unexpected bliss, "but if you should