“I think you are trying to drive me mad,” he said, “have I ever wavered between you and my mother? but I see now where I did wrong; I should have gone to her and made a friend of her, instead of defying her. I should have taken you to her--” “Taken me!” she jumped up and faced him, trembling with agitation and fury, “taken _me_! am _I_ to be dragged about to people that don’t want me, to people that dare to despise me?” “Nancy!” “Nancy! that’s all you can call me now. I used to be your love and your darling; now we’re married, and I’m bound and can’t get free, and you call me Nancy! Oh! if it was all to do again, and I knew what I know now!” “What on earth do you know now that you did not know a week ago?” he cried with an impatience beyond words; and yet he felt half inclined to laugh. That the impassioned creature who stood defying him, blazing in impulsive wrath, should resent the absence of those loves and darlings and tender words with which he had hitherto caressed her ears, so hotly as to desire to break every bond between them, struck him with a sudden sense of the absurdity of their quarrel. He went suddenly up to her and took her into his arms. “But you _are_ my darling,” he said, “all the same; though you are the most unreasonable, the most quick-tempered, the most provoking. Sweet! what is everybody in the world to me compared with you?” Thus the first quarrel terminated, though not without considerably more trouble. Nancy perhaps saw too the foolishness of this impossible struggle, and yielded after a certain amount of flattery, coaxing, and caresses. And the cloud blew over so completely that, much to his surprise he found himself able to persuade this despairing bride next morning to get the travelling dress he wished her to have, and to tone herself down generally, and make herself warm and comfortable and less fine. They crossed the Channel two days after, more lovers than ever; but no longer publishing their recent nuptials in their appearance, with Nancy’s “silk” carefully packed at the bottom of her box, and herself in a dark blue gown and little plumed hat, looking more like Mrs. Arthur Curtis than Nancy Bates had ever done before. Arthur’s heart beat high with pride and pleasure as they watched the white cliffs disappearing. Nancy not without a little natural sentiment, for she had never been out of England before, and it seemed a great thing to her to be out of her own country, and on the verge of a “foreign land.” But fortunately the passage was a very good one, so that no less elevated feeling mingled with these tender regrets. He had her in his own hands now, the bridegroom said to himself; all her antecedents left behind, the home and relations happily got rid of, and all the influences of her new life around her to wean her from the past. And how tractable she had shown herself already, how willing to be convinced! a tender creature, who accepted his dictation sweetly two minutes after she had burst forth in