ter Cecilia, received this morning--received three months after
her marriage, poor child!--in which she tells me that her husband must
unexpectedly shelter under their roof his reduced aunt. "But I will be
true to him, mamma," she touchingly writes, "I will not leave him, I
must not forget that he is my husband. Let his aunt come!" If this is
not pathetic, if this is not woman's devotion--!' The good lady waved
her gloves in a sense of the impossibility of saying more, and tied the
pocket-handkerchief over her head in a tighter knot under her chin.

Bella, who was now seated on the rug to warm herself, with her brown
eyes on the fire and a handful of her brown curls in her mouth, laughed
at this, and then pouted and half cried.

'I am sure,' said she, 'though you have no feeling for me, pa, I am one
of the most unfortunate girls that ever lived. You know how poor we are'
(it is probable he did, having some reason to know it!), 'and what a
glimpse of wealth I had, and how it melted away, and how I am here in
this ridiculous mourning--which I hate!--a kind of a widow who never was
married. And yet you don't feel for me.--Yes you do, yes you do.'

This abrupt change was occasioned by her father's face. She stopped
to pull him down from his chair in an attitude highly favourable to
strangulation, and to give him a kiss and a pat or two on the cheek.

'But you ought to feel for me, you know, pa.'

'My dear, I do.'

'Yes, and I say you ought to. If they had only left me alone and told
me nothing about it, it would have mattered much less. But that nasty Mr
Lightwood feels it his duty, as he says, to write and tell me what is in
reserve for me, and then I am obliged to get rid of George Sampson.'

Here, Lavinia, rising to the surface with the last draughtman rescued,
interposed, 'You never cared for George Sampson, Bella.'

'And did I say I did, miss?' Then, pouting again, with the curls in her
mouth; 'George Sampson was very fond of me, and admired me very much,
and put up with everything I did to him.'

'You were rude enough to him,' Lavinia again interposed.

'And did I say I wasn't, miss? I am not setting up to be sentimental
about George Sampson. I only say George Sampson was better than
nothing.'

'You didn't show him that you thought even that,' Lavinia again
interposed.

'You are a chit and a little idiot,' returned Bella, 'or you wouldn't
make such a dolly speech. What did you expect me to do? Wait till y