It was a strange situation enough. Denham did not understand; but he divined, and liked to play with the unknown danger in Nancy’s doubtful looks, and Curtis’s evident anxiety. As for Nancy, she looked at her husband with a perceptible tremor. She wanted him to instruct her, to indicate what she was to say: though, had it been possible that he could have dictated to her, that very fact would have made her perverse. At last she said hesitating, “I have seen--so little--I could not judge--I have never been out of England before.” “Ah, that accounts--” said Denham vaguely; and he was very much puzzled by this subdued bride, who had no enthusiasm either for the new world she was visiting or the old world which she had left so lately. He tried to draw her out on a variety of subjects; but Nancy, though at intervals an impulse of self-revelation would come upon her, and it was on her lips to tell him that she knew nothing of Oakley, and cared nothing, and should never be there, nor go to Rome, nor do any one of these things he was talking of, was on the other hand so afraid of betraying herself that she held back, looking stiff and silent, and scarcely could be got to say a word. As for Arthur, his anxiety made him somewhat excited and restless, it took away all ease from his manner. He wanted her to join in the conversation, to come out of the shell of reserve in which she had shut herself up; and yet he was afraid of what she might say if once roused. She was a clever girl, with much natural energy and force; but yet it was annoying how entirely the daughter of Bates the tax-collector was at a loss listening to the conversation of the two men who were not clever, yet who knew by nature many things of which she had not a notion. This Assembly they wanted her to go to, what was it? Why should she go? What was an inter--inter--what? Their world and hers were totally different, though one of them was her husband. She was relieved when they veered into gossip and began to talk of people, though she did not know the people. There she could follow them even in her ignorance; for had not she too a Lizzie Brown? CHAPTER V. “Why cannot we go home?” said Nancy. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to go to your Rome, and places. What is the good of taking me away to make a show of me? I can speak English, but I don’t know any of those jargons. I am sure it is not good French here; and as for Italian, I never heard a word of it. It is only to make me look ridiculous. Denham thinks so, Arthur. He comes and looks at me, and asks me about old Lady So-and-So. I tell him I don’t know her, and I don’t want to know her. I shall tell him some day I never knew Lady Anybody in my life, and that _I_ am a nobody. I will, if you do not take me away!”