"Do you ever show the slightest interest in what concerns me?" she retorted.
He winced. "This is a mutual interest, surely, since we must occupy it together."
"Must?" she echoed dreamily.
"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
"Nothing, except that 'must' is the word I have banished from my vocabulary," and she smiled at him—actually smiled, though she must have known she was stabbing him to the very heart.
He said no more; and indeed, words seemed to be useless.
So he chose the house himself,—one that could not fail to please Bella, he felt exultantly. She would be less than woman if she were not glad to exchange the second-rate little dwelling in the Camberwell New Road for the substantial residence, with its modern improvements and embellishments in such a neighbourhood as Camelot Square.
It was not perhaps a palace, but it was a very great deal more imposing than anything they had dreamt of in the early days of their married life, and yet John Chetwynd told himself with a sigh that he would gladly give up fame and prosperity to win back the old love-light in his wife's eyes.
And there are some among us who cannot love for so little—"Of man's love a thing apart." Perhaps John Chetwynd would have been a happier man had he been one of these.
Even the task of furnishing fell to the doctor's lot. Bella did not refuse, nor did she object to accompany him on what he might have naturally supposed would be a congenial task for her, but she showed herself so indifferent throughout that, after an effort or two to make her contented, he gave it up, and it ended in his carrying the whole thing through himself.
And he was not sorry when at length it was completed. On the morrow he would bring Bella to her new home.
He stood under the bright lighted chandelier and looked round him. The carpet was thick and soft. Bella liked carpets her feet could sink into, she had once said. There by the fireplace was the most luxurious easy chair he could purchase, upholstered in her favourite colour, pale
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