"Good-bye--Bella."
And the door fell to.
She was gone.
He could hear her hollow cough as she passed down the tesselated
corridor.
CHAPTER VI.
It was two days later. Sir John Chetwynd sat in his big easy chair
with an open letter before him. "We are surprised to have seen and
heard nothing of you," wrote the Duchess; "more especially as after
the few words we had in private upon a certain important matter, I
fully anticipated an early visit from you. But such a busy man as
yourself and one so much in request, both socially and
professionally, must not be judged by the rules which govern the
common herd, I suppose; at the same time (although I assure you she
has not said a word upon the subject) I can say that dear Ethel feels
herself a wee bit neglected. You must have been _professionally_
engaged last night, I presume, since we were obliged to dine without
you and go to see Sarah Bernhardt alone."
He had spent the whole evening in his consulting rooms, totally
forgetting his promise to escort his _fiancee_ and her mother to the
theatre.
Well, he would see them both on the morrow and make his peace, and
then--he dropped his head on his hands and fairly groaned. It was
useless to argue with himself, to bring commonsense to bear upon the
point, to count up the advantages to be derived from this union with
Lady Ethel; look at it which way he would, the fact remained the
same, that he had no longer the remotest desire to marry again.
The knowledge had certainly come tardily, but not the less surely.
He did not, he told himself, love Lady Ethel as a man should love the
wife of his bosom. Middle-aged, worn, and unemotional though he might
be, he knew that he was yet capable of a much deeper feeling than she
had evoked and he had wakened to a realisation of this since he had
again seen Bella.
He was no fool; he was, on the contrary, a shrewd, clever,
quick-witted man of the world and it was impossible to shut his eyes
to the trouble. He thought of Bella as she was when he had first
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