fter he had made her look anxious, he suddenly
remembered a letter he had for her, and handed it to her. It was from
her lawyer, and contained a cheque for twenty-five pounds, the
long-looked-forward-to pocket money.

"Will this be of any use to you?" Beth asked, handing him the cheque.

His countenance cleared. "Of use to me? I should think it would!" he
exclaimed. "It will just make all the difference. You must sign it,
though."

When she had signed it, he put it in his pocket-book, and his spirits
went up to the cheery point. He adjusted his hat at the glass over the
dining-room mantelpiece, lit a shilling cigar, and went off to his
hospital jauntily. Beth was glad to have relieved him of his anxiety.
She half hoped he might give her something out of the cheque, if it
were only a pound or two, she wanted some little things so badly; but
he never offered her a penny. She thought of Aunt Grace Mary's two
sovereigns, but the dread of having nothing in case of an emergency
kept her from spending them.

There was one thing Dan did which Beth resented. He opened her
letters.

"Husband and wife are one," he said. "They should have no secrets from
each other. I should like you to open my letters, too, but they
contain professional secrets, you see, and that wouldn't do."

He spoke in what he called his cheery way, but Beth had begun to feel
that there was another word which would express his manner better, and
now it occurred to her.

"You have no right to open my letters," she said; "and being facetious
on the subject does not give you any."

"But if I chose to?" he asked.

"It will be a breach of good taste and good feeling," she answered.

No more was said on the subject, and Dan did not open her letters for
a little, but then he began again. He had always some excuse,
however--either he hadn't looked at the address, or he had been
impatient to see if there were any message for himself, and so on; but
Beth was not mollified although she said nothing, and her annoyance
made her secretive. She would watch for the postman, and take the
letters from him herself, and conceal her own, so that Dan might not
even know that she had received any.

She had a difficulty with him about another matter too. His lover-like
caresses while they were engaged had not been distasteful to her; but
after their marriage he kept up an incessant billing and cooing, and
of a coarser kind, which soon satiated her. She was a nicely bala