“A boy brought it, sir, half an hour ago, but I clean forgot it, and that’s a fact.”

“Never mind.  It is probably of no importance.”

But it was.  By-and-by his eyes fell on it as it lay where Mrs. Brewer’s hard-working fingers had placed it, on the edge of a little gaily-lined work table destined to hold Bella Chetwynd’s cotton and needles, and to his astonishment he observed it was in his wife’s handwriting.

Ah! written just before she started for the——.He caught it up and tore it open.  The next instant it fluttered from his hold.

For fully ten seconds John Chetwynd sat spell-bound, and then he broke into a laugh—­mirthless, hollow.

“And I prayed to my God to send his blessing on—­our—­future,” he said in a dull, mechanical manner.  “Well, the last act is played out and they may ring the curtain down.  From to-night I believe neither in woman, Heaven, nor hell, save that which each man makes for himself.”

Bella had turned her shapely back on the apotheosis of respectability for a life of excitement and the protection of another man.  Nobody was surprised but John himself.

Everybody had predicted it months ago.  The only astonishing feature of the scandal was, that it had not occurred before.

The one other thing people found surprising was the callousness with which the injured husband took it.

It had always been believed that what love there was, was on his side, but now—­

Well, it is indeed an ill wind that blows us no good.  If notoriety was what John Chetwynd desired, he got it in full measure, well pressed down and brimming over; his waiting room was besieged, for many patients flocked there, wide eyed in scrutiny, martyrs to symptoms discovered or invented for the occasion.

Of course he would divorce her.  And he did.

In due course he obtained his decree nisi, which later on was made absolute.

Bella’s picture no longer stared him in the face from every hoarding, and the newspaper advertisements knew her no more.  She had gone back to the States, and by-and-by was forgotten on this side the Atlantic.

Now and then he was disagreeably reminded of her existence.

Once in the Club a young fellow to whom Chetwynd was personally unknown stretched himself behind a newspaper and muttered, “Bella Blackall Wasn’t that the name of Dr. Somebody’s wife who ran away with another fellow?”

“Yes, Bella Blackall was my wife,” John Chetwynd answered with unruffled equanimity, picking up the paper which the other had thrown down.  “She used to be rather a clever dancer, too.”

And he calmly perused the line which included her name among some well known American stars touring in the provinces.

“And he never turned a grizzled hair!  I give you my word I felt more over the thing than he did,” remarked Captain Hetherington afterwards; “without exception the most cold-blooded individual ever met.”