By the empty place on the shelf where the bank-book had stood was a gilt file for bills, a pretty little toy which had been given her, so the husband now remembered, by Uvedale. The letters composing the word "paid" were twisted round the handle--horrible symbolic word! He took up the file and ran his fingers through the receipted bills. Ah! here at last, was one which bore the name of Mrs. Bliss. The amount of the bill amazed him,--eight hundred and seventy-one pounds, sixteen shillings,--and Bella had paid four hundred pounds on account about a fortnight before. It was the only bill on the file on which there still remained a balance owing. Germaine did not need to look again at his wife's bank-book to see that the majority of the receipted bills had not been paid by cheque. These bills, so he now became aware with a frightful contraction of the heart, were for all sorts of things--expensive trifles, costly hot-house flowers, extravagantly expensive fruit--which he had enjoyed, and of which he had partaken, believing, if he thought of the matter at all--fool that he had been--that they were being paid for out of his modest income, the income which had once seemed so limitless. * * * * * "What are you doing, Oliver? You've no business to look at my things. I never look at yours." He had not heard the door open, and Bella had crept up swiftly behind him; there was some anger, but there was far more fear, in her soft voice. Germaine turned round and looked at his wife. Bella had changed her dress, and she was now wearing a painted muslin gown, her slender waist girdled with a blue ribbon. She looked exquisitely lovely, and so young,--a girl, a young and innocent girl. There fell a heavy hand on her rounded shoulder. "Oliver!" she cried, "you're hurting me!" He withdrew his hand--quickly. "Bella," he said, "I only want to ask you one question--I know everything,"--and in answer to a strange look that came over her face he added hurriedly, "Never mind how I found out. I _have_ found out, and now I only want to ask you one thing--I--I have a right to know who it is." "Who it is?" she repeated. "I don't understand what you mean, Oliver? Who--what?" but as Bella Germaine asked the useless question she shrank back; for the first time in their joint lives she felt afraid of Oliver,--afraid, and intensely sorry for him. A sob rose to her throat. What a shame it was! How on earth could he have found out? She had thought he would go on not knowing--for ever. That this should happen now, when she was so happy too,--when everything was so--so comfortable. "Tell me--tell me at once, Bella," he said again, shaken almost out of his self-control by her pretended lack of understanding. But Bella made no answer; she was retreating warily towards the open window; Oliver, poor angry Oliver, could not say much, he could not _do_ anything, out on the balcony.