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 married life that she had defied him, and he looked at her in utter astonishment.

“Yes,” she cried, turning on him like a small fury, with the book tightly held in both hands; “I’m not a child to be dictated to and ordered to do this and that.  I’m perfectly well able to act for myself and I intend to do so now and always.  I’m sick of your eternal fault-finding, and the sooner you know it the better.  If it’s not one thing it’s another.  Nothing I do is right and I’m about tired of it.”

John Chetwynd sat perfectly silent under this tirade.  He was a shrewd man, and he knew that Bella had been spending the evening with her own people, and jumped at once to the conclusion that in defying him she was acting by their advice, and his brow grew black and lowering.

Then he looked up at Bella, who, a little ashamed of her vehemence, was slowly unbuttoning her gloves, having laid aside the unlucky cause of the battle royal.

“My wife,” he said kindly, “if you will not act on my advice, let me beg of you to think twice before accepting that of others, since I at least may be credited with having your real good at heart.”

“And you think that—­you mean to imply that—­”

“That your sister has her own ends to serve?  Undoubtedly I do.”

“You are all wrong—­all wrong.”  But the tell-tale blushes on Bella’s face showed him plainly enough that he had been right in his conjecture, and had to thank his wife’s relatives for her rebellion and newly developed obstinacy and resentment.

“Now, Bella, from to-night I cannot allow you to go to Holly Street:  stay,” as Bella would have spoken, “you may see your mother here when you please, but you must let your sister fully understand that she will not be welcome.  Something surely is due to me as your husband, and that there is no great amount of sympathy between you and Saidie you have said repeatedly; therefore I am asking no great sacrifice of you.  Do you hear me, Bella?”