There was, as usual, so much sound common sense in her husband's words that Belle tried to crush down the dissatisfaction she could not help feeling at the idea of Philip being made responsible for actions of which he might know nothing. After all, had it really come to this, that she did not trust her husband to behave uprightly? The thought was poison to all peace, and she thrust it aside in horror at its very appearance. Yet a new element of trouble had entered into life and she found herself, quite unconsciously, keeping ears and eyes open for things which she had previously ignored. This did not escape her husband's keen sight, and in his light, half-serious way he rallied her on this newly-developed interest in the business. The fact was they were beginning to understand each other too well; and now and again a tone came into John's voice which sent the blood to her heart in a throb of fear and made her grovel, positively grovel, before her ideal of wifely duty. Then her husband would recover his careless good-nature, and the household run so smoothly that even Belle's high-strung nerves scarcely felt a jolt. So the spring came, bringing to the garden a rush of blossom well-nigh impossible of description to those accustomed to slow northern lands. Belle could have picked clothes-baskets full of Maréchal Niel roses from the bushes and yet have left them burdened with great yellow cups. The pomegranates glowed with a scarlet positively dazzling to the eyes; the gardenias were all too strongly scented; the bees and butterflies drugged themselves with honey from the wild tangle of overgrown, overblown annuals which, forgetting their trim English habit, usurped the very paths by thickets of mignonette, sweet pea, dianthus, and a host of other familiar flowers. Belle, walking round her domain in the early morning when the nightly gift of dew still lay on the leaves, used to wonder how serpents could creep into such a paradise. The very isolation of the life had an irresistible charm. What was the use of worrying about ideas? Where was the good of fretting over the mischances of that world which lay beyond this calm retreat?