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