"Saikes, man! you are not to eat it. Put it under your pillow and as sure as I'm a Yank you'll see your intended," she cried. And then followed an amount of vulgar chaff and coarse pleasantry which caused the "happy man" to set his teeth hard and register a vow at the bottom of his heart that this should be the last occasion on which his wife should associate with her sister's friends. And then Bella came tripping down the narrow staircase, her cheeks warm with a pale pink colour that made her inexpressibly lovely; and the carriage which Mrs. Blackall had insisted upon ordering to take the young couple to the station was at the door, and in the bustle that ensued Jack lost sight of all annoyances and remembered only that he had married the girl he loved and that he was the happiest fellow in the universe; and amid a shower of rice and a white satin slipper (one of Saidie's), which fell right into Bella's lap; the last farewell was spoken, and they drove away. "Only to Brighton!" cried Nina Nankin, the celebrity famed for the height to which she could raise one leg while standing upon the other. "What a mean chap! He might have forked out enough for a trip to Paris, I should have thought." "It wouldn't satisfy me," returned Saidie, turning up her nose disdainfully; "but he isn't my style, anyway." "Bit of a prig, eh?" Saidie nodded. "I do detest a man who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not going to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day of the week. I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's made before she's many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block about that young woman, for all her baby ways and her innocent know-nothing. He'll be a spry man, will Dr. Chetwynd, to come up to her. It'll take him all he knows to get ahead, you bet". Saidie lay back in the chair and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. CHAPTER II It was not long before Dr. Chetwynd's eyes were fully open to the mistake he had made and that he realised the fact that you cannot fashion a Dresden vase out of earthenware, and though pinchbeck may pass muster for gold, it does not make it the real article. At first Bella did try her "level best" as Saidie put it, to be all that Jack required of her. She took his lecturings humbly, held her peace when he scolded her (and I am afraid he constantly did), and acknowledged in the depths of her shallow little mind that she fell far short of what his wife should be. But as time went on she grew less solicitous about pleasing him. His standard was an almost impossible one to the very second-rate little American girl, to whom the atmosphere of the "Halls" was far more congenial than the humdrum, quiet life she led in the Camberwell New Road, and she slipped back little by little into the mire out of which he had raised her.