"I can never learn to be what he wants me to," she said a little pathetically to Saidie--"It is like standing on tiptoe all the time trying to reach up to his standard. I'm sick of it. If he loved me well enough to marry me, the same love ought to be strong enough to make him contented with me. After all, I'm the same Bella now that I was then." A word of advice at this juncture might have quieted the poor little wife, and brought her back into safe paths, for she really loved Jack in her heart; but Saidie was not the person to give it. Privately she considered her sister a fool to have put up with this ridiculous nonsense of her husband's as long as she had done; and the line of argument she took was about the worst she could have adopted for the happiness and peace of the Camberwell household. She was a good deal older than Bella, and the girl had been wont to rely upon her in a great measure, and to look up to her as a practical, sensible person, which Bella was quite ready to admit she herself was very far from being; so now, when Saidie spoke in a resolute, determined way, she listened meekly, if she did not in so many words acquiesce in the wisdom and justice of what she said. "As far as I can see, you don't get a bit of fun and happiness out of your life," remarked Saidie, critically examining her features in the glass. "What did you marry him for, I should like to know? You might as well be Bella Blackall, on the boards again, and free, as the wife of a stingy fellow like that." "Oh! Saidie, he doesn't grudge me anything." The young wife felt a little compunction in her heart. "Yes he does." Saidie turned round and faced her sister. "He don't like you to enjoy yourself, not a little bit. He would keep you wrapped up in cotton wool if he could, and if you don't make a stand now, once and for all, and let him see you have a mind of your own and intend to do as you like, you'll regret it to the last day of your life. Who is he, anyway? I guess our family's as good, if we knew anything about them, which we don't, worse luck. Just you give him back his own sauce, Bella, and next time he finds fault with you, laugh in his face and tell him he has got to put up with what he finds, for it ain't likely you can alter your nature to suit his high mightiness. Pitch on a thing or two he does which you don't like, and give him a sermon as long as your arm. You see; he will come off his pedestal. Sakes alive! he ought to have me to deal with; I bet I'd teach him a thing or two." And then Saidie whipped herself off to the "Rivolette," where she sang a doubtful song and displayed her finely turned limbs in a style that would have disgusted her brother-in-law, if he had been there to see. But music halls were not to his liking under any circumstances. He had never really cared for them, even in his bachelor days, and now he would have cut his right hand off rather than be seen with his young wife beside him, at such resorts.