“What is this great thing I am to do--give up smoking--take off my moustache?” “Oh! no!” cried Nancy, horrified. “The nicest thing about you!” which pleased Arthur much, for it was still new enough to give him unfeigned and honest pride. “But I will tell you what it is. Nancy is so vulgar, so common, not a name for a lady; and it will not sound well here, abroad, where people have such pretty names. Call me Anna--I have always wished it. I was christened Anna Frances, you know.” “And I could not think who she was when they married me to her,” cried Arthur. “I will call you what you like, my darling; but I like Nancy best.” Did ever young people start on a honeymoon expedition with a better understanding? He planned a hundred places to take her to, and things to do. The theatre every night!--How Nancy’s eyes sparkled! and the Louvre, of which she was quite willing to admit that it must be very fine, without knowing what it was; and the Tuileries gardens with the band playing, and the beautiful shops in the Boulevards. Even to hear of these delights was enough to charm any bride. They were to go everywhere, to see everything, to walk about and drive about always these two together--nobody to interfere with them; and the play every night! What could any bride desire more? CHAPTER II. Paris, with all its lamps and shop-windows, dazzled Nancy. It was before the days in which ruins were visible from that brilliant Rue de Rivoli, through which they drove to their hotel. She thought it was an illumination as she saw the sweeping circles of light in the Place de la Concorde, and the long line of lamps under the archways, and could not be persuaded that this was how the brightest of cities adorned herself every night. And when she opened her eyes next morning to the brilliancy of the winter sunshine, and saw the brightness and gaiety of everything around, Nancy was fairly transported out of herself. She had never even been in a great hotel before, for Arthur had taken her to London lodgings he had been in the habit of using, in Jermyn Street, which were not dazzling. But here everything was lovely, Nancy thought. They had a little _appartement_ in one of the great hotels over-looking the garden of the Tuileries, with a little balcony; and from the white carpet with its bouquet, and the sparkling wood-fire which was so bright and clean, and supplemented the sunshine so delightfully, to the mirrors and gilding, and white panels of the walls, everything she looked upon filled Nancy with a bewildering delicious sense of having arrived at the summit of fineness and splendour, and being a lady indeed, a princess almost, enshrined in a bower of bliss. Nothing she had ever seen in all her limited experience was half so splendid; and the noiseless waiters who ran up and down with every luxury that Arthur could think of, and the dainty food, and the perpetual service bewildered her unaccustomed brain.