“I never can do anything I like,” said Bella with a pout.

And then there came a night when John Chetwynd found the pretty drawing-room deserted and his wife flown.

The hours went by and as she did not return he grew seriously uneasy.

Where could she be?  When eleven o’clock struck he put on his hat and, terribly though it went against the grain, started for Holly Street—­she might be at her mother’s.

No, Mrs. Blackall had not seen her, she said; and she looked searchingly into her son-in-law’s face as she spoke.  “Did Dr. Chetwynd really not know where she was?”

“No, madam, or assuredly I should not be here.”

The doctor spoke with some heat; that there was something behind all this was very evident, and he naturally objected to being made a fool of.

“You don’t know, then, that Bella is on at the Tivoli?”

John Chetwynd sat down suddenly.  This news literally took his breath away.

It was not possible that Bella had taken such a step without his knowledge or sanction.  He looked up with such hopeless misery written in his white face that Mrs. Blackall could not help a certain pity for her son-in-law, although in her opinion he had brought the thing upon himself, and the very compassion she felt for his suffering had the effect of making her more harsh and unsympathetic.

“What did you expect?” she asked.  “As a man of the world could you really imagine that a young, high-spirited girl like my daughter would content herself with the life you tried to chain her down to?  She had had just taste enough of the admiration and applause of a public life to get a liking for it, and in an instant it is all taken away and nothing given her in its place.  It ain’t commonsense, it—­”

“It may not be,” said Chetwynd wearily; “but there are women nevertheless to whom home and husband are all-sufficient and who ask for nothing beyond.”

“You made a great mistake, Mr. Chetwynd, when you—­”

“I did,” he interrupted quickly; “you are perfectly right; I did when I believed my wife and your daughter to be one of these.  Well,” and he rose wearily, “she has put a barrier between us to-night that can never be broken down.”

“Tut, tut, man; you have got your duty to do by her, and I’ll take good care you do it.  She is doing no wrong to join her profession again.”

“Our ideas as to right and wrong probably differ.  I am certainly not going to argue the point, nor do I wish to shirk what responsibility I took on my shoulders when I married.  But if it is upon your advice she has acted in this matter, ask God to forgive you for the cruel wrong you have done us both!”

Then he picked up his hat and went out of the house.  It was long past midnight when Bella returned; but late though it was, she knew by the lights in the drawing room that her husband was waiting up for her, and with an impatient sigh, determined to get her lecture over, she ran lightly up-stairs.