Take to-day. Fanny would certainly feel cross and disappointed that Bella was not there, in the Park, too; and, as a matter of fact, Germaine had tried to make his wife please his sister in the little matter of Church Parade--but Bella had shaken her head smilingly. "You know I would do anything for Fanny," she had said, "but really, darling, you mustn't ask me to do _that_--to go into that big, horrid, staring crowd. Why should I? It makes one look so cheap! It would only bore me, and I don't think Fanny would really enjoy having me there," and Bella had smiled a little smile. Germaine had smiled too,--he really couldn't help it! It was quite true that Fanny would not enjoy seeing Bella looked at, followed,--in a word, triumphing, in the way she did triumph every time she appeared in a place where she was likely to be recognised. Of course it was odd, when one came to think of it, that Bella, who had been just as pretty two years ago as she was now, should, for some mysterious reason, have been suddenly discovered, by those whose word is law in such matters, to be astonishingly, marvellously beautiful! An involuntary smile again quivered across Oliver Germaine's good-looking face. He had but little sense of humour, and yet even he saw something almost comic about it--the way that Bella, his darling, pretty little Bella, had suddenly been exalted--hoisted up, as it were, on to a pinnacle. She was now what the Londoners of a hundred years ago would have called "the reigning toast"--so an amusing old fellow, who was a great authority on history, had told him a few days ago. Still, he ought to make allowances for his sister Fanny. It was not in human nature--or so Oliver believed--for any woman, even for such a good sort as Fanny undoubtedly was, to be really pleased at another woman's triumph. Small wonder that, to use his sister's favourite expression, Fanny could not make it out! It was unfortunate that Bella's fame--that fame of which the young husband was half ashamed and half proud--had actually penetrated to the dull village where his only sister held high state as wife of the lord of the manor. Since Fanny had been in town she had said little things to him about Bella's position as reigning beauty--not altogether kindly or nice little things. Even yesterday she had observed, with a touch of sharp criticism in her voice, "I wonder, dear old boy, why you allow Bella's photograph to appear in all those low papers!" and Oliver had shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what to answer, but comfortably sure, in a brotherly way, that Fanny would have been quite willing to see her own fair features reproduced in similar fashion, had it occurred to any of the editors of these same enterprising papers to ask for the loan of her photograph.