He thought more and more on this subject, for Marie, her first timidity got over, began to ask him artless questions about his home.

He told her that his family consisted of five members. He had a brother older than himself, who was a lawyer in Boston. He was married, but had no children, and he lived in the old family mansion on Beacon Hill, with his two sisters, Maud and Edith, who were respectively nineteen and seventeen, and had not quit the school-room yet. The fifth person was Mrs. Wilson, their governess.

"Maud is the elder. She is quite talented, and is writing a novel," he said. "Edith is an embryo artist. My brother's wife is very pretty and fashionable. I hope you will like them all."

But a shudder crept over him at the thought of taking home a bride into that refined and cultured circle to place her in the school-room, to begin at the bottom of the ladder of learning. How shocked they would be, how his brother's wife would lift her pale brows in wonder! He dreaded her more than all the rest, for two reasons. One was that she had brought a little money into the once rich, but now impoverished Van Zandt family, and took airs on that account, and the other was that she had a pretty sister with a dot, and wanted to make a match between her and her brother-in-law. So Eliot fancied, and with some reason, that she would not take kindly to the new-comer.

The further he got away from New Orleans, the more he was tormented by his dread of his home-folks.

At last he made up his mind to give Marie some sight-seeing in New York, and to write to his brother, and, to some extent, prepare them for the shock they were to receive.

When the letter was written and posted, he felt better. He had explained matters and invoked their good-will for his simple child-wife. However much they were disappointed, they would respect his wishes, they would not be unkind to Marie.

So he gave himself up with a light heart to the pleasure of showing her the wonders of New York City.

Several days were spent there, and then he took her to Niagara Falls for a few days more. He judged by that time that they would have got over the shock in Boston, and be ready, perhaps, to receive Marie with equanimity.

In this hope, he took the train for Boston with his little bride.

Throughout their long journey Van Zandt had adhered to his manly resolve of treating his little bride simply as a dear friend or young sister until she should have awakened from a child into a woman and given her heart unreservedly with a wifely love.

On the steamer she had her separate state-room, at hotels her solitary suite of rooms, on the trains her comfortable Pullman sleeping-car, while the chivalrous young husband lounged away the long hours in a smoking-car with his favorite cigar. The young bride, in her ignorance and innocence, had not an idea but that this was the usual mode of procedure with husband and wife, and thoroughly enjoyed the long journey and the varied scenery through which she was being whirled. Its newness and the strong contrast to her Southern home made it all the more delightful. Eliot Van Zandt enjoyed her delight, her naÏve questions, and even her utter ignorance of everything, although he sometimes caught himself wondering at the fact. But the truth was, that the girl's invariably well-chosen sentences, acquired from companionship with refined and well-bred people, made him often forget that she was totally uneducated, and that years of school-room drudgery yet lay before her ere she could take her place in the cultured world of Boston society.

"There is one comfort. She is exceedingly intelligent, quick, and receptive. She will learn very fast," he told himself.

One evening, at Niagara, when they sat together admiring the glorious falls by moonlight, she said to him, curiously:

"You said once that if you could have chosen my name, it would not have been Marie. Tell me what you would have called me?"

Turning to her with a smile, he replied:

"The name that I always fancied I should like for my wife to bear was the sweet one of Una—no sweeter, I know, than Marie, but I grew to love the name from reading Spenser's 'FaËry Queen.'"

Then he told her the pretty story, as well as he could, of the beautiful Una who personified Truth in the "FaËry Queen." She listened with sparkling eyes and eager interest.

"From this hour I shall be called Una," she exclaimed.

"But you have been baptized Marie," he said.

"It shall be Una Marie, then," she replied, in her pretty, positive fashion, and he was pleased to assent.

"From this hour, then, I shall call you Una, and you shall call me Eliot."

"But, monsieur—" deprecatingly.

"No more monsieurs," he replied, playfully. "They remind me too much of Madame Lorraine."

"It shall be Eliot, then, always," answered the little bride.