If Only etc. | Page 4

he could, and if you don't make a stand now, once and
for all, and let him see you have a mind of your own and intend to do as
you like, you'll regret it to the last day of your life. Who is he, anyway?
I guess our family's as good, if we knew anything about them, which
we don't, worse luck. Just you give him back his own sauce, Bella, and
next time he finds fault with you, laugh in his face and tell him he has
got to put up with what he finds, for it ain't likely you can alter your
nature to suit his high mightiness. Pitch on a thing or two he does
which you don't like, and give him a sermon as long as your arm. You
see; he will come off his pedestal. Sakes alive! he ought to have me to
deal with; I bet I'd teach him a thing or two."
And then Saidie whipped herself off to the "Rivolette," where she sang
a doubtful song and displayed her finely turned limbs in a style that
would have disgusted her brother-in-law, if he had been there to see.
But music halls were not to his liking under any circumstances. He had
never really cared for them, even in his bachelor days, and now he
would have cut his right hand off rather than be seen with his young
wife beside him, at such resorts.
Then, too, Dr. Chetwynd felt that it behoved him to be circumspect in
all his actions, for his practice was steadily increasing and he was
becoming popular, and had serious thoughts of migrating westward. It
was a constant source of vexation to him that Bella was not liked as
much as her handsome, clever husband, and he began to be painfully
alive to the fact that she could not have been received in certain houses
whose doors would have been gradually opened to him. In a social
sense his wife was a failure, and with a sigh he realised that it was
almost an impossibility to show her where the fault lay; he could not
always be at her elbow to guard against little solecisms of manner and
speech which he knew must jar and grate on others even more than on
himself.
It went terribly against the grain, for he loved her none the less that his
eyes were not blinded to her shortcomings. She was still the same
winsome girl he had made his own; large-hearted, gentle and

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."
"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