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 dignity.

"Why should you be less pure because you have a husband, my child? Don't run away with any such notion."

"Well, I will read it and give you my opinion of it."

"You will do no such thing. I forbid it, Bella."

"In a matter like this I shall judge for myself." Her cheeks were scarlet, and she kept her eyes downbent.

"I will not—"

"Bella!"

It was the first time in their married life that she had defied him, and he looked at her in utter astonishment.

"Yes," she cried, turning on him like a small fury, with the book tightly held in both hands; "I'm not a child to be dictated to and ordered to do this and that. I'm perfectly well able to act for myself and I intend to do so now and always. I'm sick of your eternal fault-finding, and the sooner you know it the better. If it's not one thing it's another. Nothing I do is right and I'm about tired of it."

John Chetwynd sat perfectly silent under this tirade. He was a shrewd man, and he knew that Bella had been spending the evening with her own people, and jumped at once to the conclusion that in defying him she was acting by their advice, and his brow grew black and lowering.

Then he looked up at Bella, who, a little ashamed of her vehemence, was slowly unbuttoning her gloves, having laid aside the unlucky cause of the battle royal.

"My wife," he said kindly, "if you will not act on my advice, let me beg of you to think twice before accepting that of others, since I at least may be credited with having your real good at heart."

"And you think that—you mean to imply that—"

"That your sister has her own ends to serve? Undoubtedly I do."

"You are all wrong—all wrong." But the tell-tale blushes on Bella's face showed him plainly enough that he had been right in his conjecture, and had to thank his wife's relatives for her rebellion and newly developed obstinacy and resentment.

"Now, Bella, from to-night I cannot allow you to go to Holly Street: stay," as Bella would have spoken, "you may see your mother here when you please, but you must let your sister fully understand that she will not be welcome. Something surely is due to me as your husband, and that there is no great amount of sympathy between you and Saidie you have said repeatedly; therefore I am asking no great sacrifice of you. Do you hear me, Bella?"

"Yes, I hear."

"And you will respect my wishes in the matter?"

"I don't know," she spoke uncertainly.

She was not fond of her sister, as he had said; certainly not sufficiently fond of her to allow her to come between herself and Jack; and yet she felt that it would be unwise and undignified if she were to give in and refuse Saidie admission to their house. She had just declared that she would stand no coercion; and after all, what had poor Saidie done?

"I don't think you have any right to keep my people away," she said at last, sullenly. "This is my house as well as yours, remember."

"I am not going to argue over it, my dear girl." Dr. Chetwynd rose determinedly from his chair with an expression on his face which his wife had learned to know and dread. "I forbid you to ask your sister here again. I am sorry to have to speak so decidedly; but your conduct leaves me no alternative."

And he walked quickly across the floor and the next moment the door closed upon him.

"I don't care what he says. I won't be ordered about," flashed out Bella, all that was worst in her nature roused by Jack's resolution. "Saidie is quite right; if I don't put my foot down I shall soon be nothing better than a white slave."

"Putting her foot down," certainly had one effect, namely, that of making life anything but a bed of roses for the unfortunate doctor.

Never had Bella shown herself so unamiable and unloveable as during the next two days. She hardly addressed her husband and she flounced about the room and tossed her head and hummed music-hall ditties (which she had caught from Saidie) under her breath, and altogether comported herself in the most exasperating fashion.

John Chetwynd hardly knew how to act towards her. If he pretended to be unconscious of anything unusual, it would probably provoke her to stronger measures, and yet he was very loth to stir up strife between them, and leant towards the hope that this spirit of fractiousness would die out in time and that Bella would become her loving, tractable self again. But he reckoned without his host.

Saidie, who was duly apprised of the condition of things, urged upon her sister to stick to her guns and on no account to yield an inch, and although desperately miserable, Bella took her advice.

Returning from seeing a patient a day or two later, Dr. Chetwynd ran into the arms of an old friend, a man he had not seen since his marriage.

"Why, Meynell, old chap, where have you dropped from?" he exclaimed, grasping the outstretched hand.

"Where have you hidden yourself? is more to the purpose. No one ever sees you nowadays."

Dr. Chetwynd smiled.

"Perhaps you do not know I am a married man," he said. "Which accounts for a good deal of my time, and as a matter of fact I have but little leisure, for my practice keeps me always at the grindstone."

"Doing pretty well?"

"Yes, I think I may say I am. Uphill work, of course, but still—"

"And where are you living?"

Chetwynd hesitated.

"Close by here," he replied the next moment. "Come home with me now, if you have nothing better to do, and allow me to present my wife to you."

And they walked on side by side.

"You have dined? I am afraid—"

"My dear fellow, I have this moment left the club."

Dr. Chetwynd put his latch-key into the lock and ushered his friend upstairs to his wife's pretty drawing-room.

But Bella was not there; and finding that she was not in her bedroom, or in fact in the house at all, he rang the bell and questioned the maid as to when her mistress had gone out and if she knew when she would be likely to return.

"No, sir, that I'm sure I don't. My mistress never said anything to me."

"Well, she is not likely to be away long," remarked the doctor philosophically. "Have a cigar, Meynell."

"Thanks, no. Your wife spoils you, Jack, if she allows you to smoke in her pretty little room."

"Oh, she will not mind; but we will go down to my den shortly. You see, Meynell, I'm a bit of a Bohemian, although I like to preserve the customs of the civilised world all the same, to a certain extent. But my little wife—well—she—she—I daresay you may have heard she was on the stage before I married her."

"No, indeed I