"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."