that Bella was not liked as
much as her handsome, clever husband, and he began to be painfully
alive to the fact that she could not have been received in certain
houses whose doors would have been gradually opened to him. In a
social sense his wife was a failure, and with a sigh he realised that
it was almost an impossibility to show her where the fault lay; he
could not always be at her elbow to guard against little solecisms of
manner and speech which he knew must jar and grate on others even
more than on himself.

It went terribly against the grain, for he loved her none the less
that his eyes were not blinded to her shortcomings. She was still the
same winsome girl he had made his own; large-hearted, gentle and
affectionate, but--and he sighed impatiently, for that something
lacking was for ever pulling him back and standing in the way of his
own social advancement.

He became less demonstrative, less congenial, and his practice made
huge demands upon his time, and left but scant opportunity for
pleasure-seeking. Lines traced themselves upon his brow and lurked at
the corners of his mouth; he aged rapidly, and began to look like an
elderly man while Bella was still little more than a girl.

On the night of Mrs. Chetwynd's return from the maternal roof (for
Mrs. Blackall still lived near the Waterloo Road, and her elder
daughter continued to make her home with her), she found her husband,
a good deal to her surprise, seated in the drawing-room, gay with
flowers and crowded with knick-nacks of every description. He had in
his hand a book which he flung down with an annoyed gesture as his
wife opened the door.

It was perhaps no worse than others of its type, but it had not an
honest moral tone and was not therefore, John Chetwynd considered, a
desirable work for his young wife's perusal.

"Have you read this?" he asked.

"No; it is one of Saidie's. Is it interesting?"

John Chetwynd's answer was to hurl the volume under the grate with an
angry word.

Bella flushed.

"Why did you do that? I want to read it."

"I will not allow you to sully your mind with such filth. It only
goes to prove what I have so often told you, that your sister is not
a proper associate for any young woman. A book of that
description--faugh!"

Bella picked up the offending volume and looked ruefully at its
battered condition. "I should have supposed that as a married woman I
might read anything," she said with an assumption of di