'I don't like it, dear,' said Mabel; 'I don't like your joining Harold in a thing like that. I know you did it all for the best, but I don't see why you could not have told him; if he was not well enough to come to the wedding we should have understood it!' 'Perhaps you're right,' said Mark, easily, 'but, at all events, no harm has come of it to anybody. How they are thinning the trees along here, aren't they? Just look down that avenue!' And Mabel let him turn the conversation from a subject she was glad enough to forget. CHAPTER XXXVI. LITTLE RIFTS. One bright morning in May, not long after the return from the Continent, Mabel was sitting in her own room at the back of the small house which had been taken on Campden Hill; she was writing at a table by the raised window, when the door opened suddenly, and Mark burst in, in a state of suppressed but very evident excitement. 'I have brought you something!' he said, and threw down three peacock-blue volumes upon her open blotting-case; the title, 'Sweet Bells Jangled,' ran in sprawling silver letters from corner to corner of the covers, through a medley of cracked bells and withered hyacinths in dull gold; the general effect being more bold than pleasing. Mabel was just about to exclaim sympathetically, 'What a frightful binding they've given you, dear;' when Mark informed her, with some complacency, that it was his own design. 'Nowadays, you see,' he explained, 'you want something to catch the eye, or you won't be read!' Inwardly Mabel could not help wondering that he could condescend to such a device, or think it necessary in his own case. 'Look at the fly-leaf,' he said, and she opened the first volume, and read the printed dedication, '_To My Wife._' 'I thought that must bring me luck,' he said; 'and now, darling, do you know what you are going to do? You are going to put away all those confounded letters and sit down here, and read the opening chapters carefully, and tell me what you think of them.' For till then he had made continual excuses for not showing her any portion of his new work, either in manuscript or proof, from mixed motives of vanity and diffidence. Mabel laughed with affectionate pride at his anxiety: 'This is what comes of marrying a great author!' she said; 'go away and let me begin at once, and tell you at lunch how I enjoyed it.' 'No,' said Mark despotically, 'I'm going to stay here--or you might try to skip.' 'But I can't allow that,' she protested; 'suppose I find I'm obliged to skip--suppose it's a terrible disappointment? No, you ridiculous Mark, I didn't mean it--stay if you like, I'm not afraid of being disappointed--though I really would enjoy it best in solitude!'