"She might do worse, sir. I don't say Blase is handsome: he is not: but he is steady. If men and women were all chosen by their looks, Mr. Frank, a good many would go unmarried. Blase Pellet is putting by money: he will be setting up for himself, some day; and he would make her a good husband." "Do you tell your daughter that he would?" asked Frank. "She won't let me tell her, sir. I say to her sometimes that she seems frightened at hearing the young man's very name mentioned: just as though it would bring some evil upon her. I know what I think." "What?" asked Frank. "Why, that Rosaline pressed this settling in London upon me, on purpose to put a wider distance between herself and Blase. Falmouth was within reach, and he now and then came over there. I did not suspect her of this till last Sunday, Mr. Frank. When tea was over, and Blase had gone, she just sat with her hands before her, looking more dead than alive. 'After all, it seems we had better have stayed at Falmouth,' said she suddenly, as if speaking to herself: and that gave me the idea that she had come here to be farther away from him." Frank made no remark. "Blase has found a place at a druggist's close by," continued Mrs. Bell: whose chatter, once in full flow, was not easily stopped. "I don't suppose he'll like London as well as Trennach, and so I told him. _I_ don't. Great noisy bustling place!" It seemed that there was nothing more to ask or learn, and Frank bethought himself of his patients. Wishing the old dame good-night, he departed. His first visit led him past the druggist's; and his glance, as though fascinated, turned to the window. There, amidst the sheen of red and green and blue reflected from the brilliant globes, he saw the face of Blase Pellet; just as he had been wont to see it amidst the glow of the same varied colours at Trennach. CHAPTER III. CROPPING UP AGAIN. "Why, Daisy. Out marketing, my dear?" The salutation to Mrs. Frank Raynor came from her husband. One winter's morning, regardless of the extreme cold and the frost that made the streets partly deserted, she followed her husband when he went out after breakfast. The dwelling-place of Mrs. Bell and her daughter in West Street had become known to her long ago; and Daisy was always longing to see whether her husband's footsteps took him to it. That most unreasoning jealousy, which had seized upon her mind, increased in force. It was growing almost into a disease. She felt as sure as if she had seen it written in letters of divination, that her husband's love had been, was, and ever would be Rosaline Bell's: that it never had been hers: and over and over again she asked herself the question--why had he married her?