But all her newly formed resolves were put to flight when Jack came towards her and deliberately kissed the lips which she vainly tried to withhold.
"Bella, you and I love each other too well to quarrel," he said kindly; "let us forget all that happened last night."
What could she say? In spite of herself she felt that she was yielding; and though she did not meet him half way as he had fondly anticipated she would do, still she allowed him to draw her into his arms and did not repulse his caresses.
She might have shown a more generous spirit, it is true. Since he had tacitly acknowledged that they had been mutually to blame, she might have offered something in the shape of an expression of regret; but peace in any shape and at any cost Chetwynd felt he must have.
But Bella had by no means surrendered her determination of going on the stage again, and was already with Saidie's assistance on the look-out for an engagement. It would be difficult to define her feelings towards her husband at this juncture. That there was still a veiled hostility John Chetwynd could not fail to see; but in his newly formed resolution to be patient and forbearing, he simply ignored it and diligently cultivated a kindly, gentle bearing, interesting himself in her little domesticities and the general routine of her everyday life. This amused Bella intensely, and although she would not have acknowledged it, perhaps touched her a little.
Why had he not done this before? And having been careless and indifferent once, why was he not so still? For this is how it was with Bella; she was learning to compare her husband with her lover, and be very sure the former suffered by comparison.
"Les absents ont toujours tort" and Saidie found so much to say and said it in such a contemptuous, scornful way to Howard Astley, about her sister's husband, that perhaps there was some little excuse for the young man's impression that Bella Chetwynd would be vastly better off under his protection than amid her present surroundings.
"The man was a brute," Miss Blackall declared.
Poor John Chetwynd! Not only was he far removed from being a brute, but he was also miles
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