“Yes, I hear.”

“And you will respect my wishes in the matter?”

“I don’t know,” she spoke uncertainly.

She was not fond of her sister, as he had said; certainly not sufficiently fond of her to allow her to come between herself and Jack; and yet she felt that it would be unwise and undignified if she were to give in and refuse Saidie admission to their house.  She had just declared that she would stand no coercion; and after all, what had poor Saidie done?

“I don’t think you have any right to keep my people away,” she said at last, sullenly.  “This is my house as well as yours, remember.”

“I am not going to argue over it, my dear girl.”  Dr. Chetwynd rose determinedly from his chair with an expression on his face which his wife had learned to know and dread.  “I forbid you to ask your sister here again.  I am sorry to have to speak so decidedly; but your conduct leaves me no alternative.”

And he walked quickly across the floor and the next moment the door closed upon him.

“I don’t care what he says.  I won’t be ordered about,” flashed out Bella, all that was worst in her nature roused by Jack’s resolution.  “Saidie is quite right; if I don’t put my foot down I shall soon be nothing better than a white slave.”

“Putting her foot down,” certainly had one effect, namely, that of making life anything but a bed of roses for the unfortunate doctor.

Never had Bella shown herself so unamiable and unloveable as during the next two days.  She hardly addressed her husband and she flounced about the room and tossed her head and hummed music-hall ditties (which she had caught from Saidie) under her breath, and altogether comported herself in the most exasperating fashion.

John Chetwynd hardly knew how to act towards her.  If he pretended to be unconscious of anything unusual, it would probably provoke her to stronger measures, and yet he was very loth to stir up strife between them, and leant towards the hope that this spirit of fractiousness would die out in time and that Bella would become her loving, tractable self again.  But he reckoned without his host.

Saidie, who was duly apprised of the condition of things, urged upon her sister to stick to her guns and on no account to yield an inch, and although desperately miserable, Bella took her advice.

Returning from seeing a patient a day or two later, Dr. Chetwynd ran into the arms of an old friend, a man he had not seen since his marriage.

“Why, Meynell, old chap, where have you dropped from?” he exclaimed, grasping the outstretched hand.

“Where have you hidden yourself? is more to the purpose.  No one ever sees you nowadays.”

Dr. Chetwynd smiled.

“Perhaps you do not know I am a married man,” he said.  “Which accounts for a good deal of my time, and as a matter of fact I have but little leisure, for my practice keeps me always at the grindstone.”