Ethel smiled again. "That is your affair," she replied, "do you rouse your courage, if you look upon these as evils. I shall feel nothing of all this, while near you; care--poverty--want! as if I needed any thing except your love--you yourself--who are mine." "Yes, dear," replied Villiers, "that is all very well at this moment; rolling along in a comfortable carriage--an hotel ready to receive us, with all its luxuries; but suppose us without any of these, Ethel--suppose yourself in a melancholy, little, dingy abode, without servants, without carriage, going out on foot." "Not alone," replied his wife, laughing, and kissing his hand; "I shall have you to wait on me--to wait upon--" "You take it very well now," said Edward; "I hope that you will never be put to the trial. I am far from anticipating this excess of wretchedness, of course, but I cannot help feeling, that the prospects of to-morrow are uncertain, and I am anxious for my long-delayed letters from England." With Ethel's deep and warm affection, had she been ten or only five years older, she also must have participated in Edward's inquietude. But care is a word, not an emotion, for the very young. She was only seventeen. She had never attended to the disbursements of money--she was ignorant of the mechanism of giving and receiving, on which the course of our life depends. It was in vain that she sought in the interior of her mind for an image that should produce fear or regret, with regard to the absence or presence of money. No one reflection or association brought into being an idea on the subject. Again she kissed Edward's hand, and looked on him with her soft clear eyes, thinking only, "He is here--and Heaven has given me all I ask." Left again to themselves, they were anxious to avoid acquaintances. Yet this was impossible during the Holy Week at Rome. Villiers found many persons whom he knew; women of high rank and fashion, men of wealth, or with the appearance of it, enjoying the present, and, while away from England, unencumbered by care. Mr. and Mrs. Villiers were among these, and of them; their rank and their style of living resembling theirs, associated them together. All this was necessary to Edward, for he had been accustomed to it--it was natural to Ethel, because, being wholly inexperienced, she did as others did, and as Villiers wished her to do, without reflection or forethought.