wered, doubtfully. "I, too, am fond of old ocean, but
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
should be too frightened to learn if he were my teacher."

"Then some one else must be thought of," Edward said, with a look of
amusement. "How would I answer?"

"You? Oh, splendidly!"

"You are not afraid of me?"

"No, indeed!" she cried, with a merry laugh and a saucy look up into his
face.

"And yet I'm the only person who has authority over you."

"Authority, indeed!" with a little contemptuous sniff.

"You promised to obey, you know."

"Did I? Well, maybe so, but that's just a form that doesn't really mean
anything. Most any married woman will tell you that."

"Do you consider the whole of your marriage vow an unmeaning form, Zoe?"
he asked, with sudden gravity and a look of doubt and pain in his eyes
that she could not bear to see.

"No, no! I was only in jest," she said, dropping her eyes and blushing
deeply. "But really, Edward, you don't think, do you, that wives are to
obey like children?"

"