All her natural gaiety and much of her aplomb had left Laura on the day Dalton sailed from Southampton, and now she was as crushed in spirit as a poor woman well could be. 'We love because we have loved,' says a novelist, 'and it is easier to go on in the old routine, even when all the real life and beauty has died out of it, than to break with the mere _memory_ of that time which made our life holy and beautiful to us.' In the time of this strange enforced separation--in the time of Dalton's actual desertion of Laura, and when she knew not whether he was dead or living till she met him at Aldershot--this had been something of the sentiment that inspired her; but now that they had both known and loved each other anew under better auspices, and been so briefly re-united, a contemplation of the catastrophe that might yet happen wrung Laura's heart to the core. On leaving the latter, Bella, though still a prey to choking grief, in the warm and generous impulse of her nature, conceived the idea of, or thought she might find some comfort in, a visit to Lady Wilmot. She was _his_ mother, whose grief at least could not be inferior to her own. She committed to oblivion all that lady's treatment of herself in the past time, and even but lately at the Charity Bazaar; yet it was not without some misgivings, and even pausing in her progress once or twice, that she turned the heads of her pretty ponies in the direction of Wilmothurst, her tears falling hotly under her thick Shetland veil as she passed down the stately avenue and through the Chase, where every foot of the way suggested some memory of Jerry and his happy boyhood, when they were playmates till he went to Eton, and Lady Julia--well, never permitted _her_ name to be on the ordinary visitors' list. There was a tall elm up which he had clambered, at the risk of his limbs, to get her a magpie's nest; here they had gathered the early primroses in April, and the Lent lilies in May, or hunted for butterflies. How often had they played croquet together on the bowling-green, and rowed dreamily for hours on the tree-shaded river; and at every turn the figure of the boy seemed to come before her, mingled with that of the moustached and handsome young officer to whom she so strangely bade farewell. Full of these thoughts, Bella would not be repelled by the conventional manner or replies of the footman, and begged so earnestly to see Lady Julia that she was ushered into her presence by the former, as we have described in the last chapter. Poor Bella had but one thought--Lady Julia was _his_ mother, and gladly in that hour of woe would she have thrown her arms around her and embraced her tenderly; but Lady Julia was cold and calm in aspect and bearing as a Greek marble statue, and received her visitor without rising, and with a brief conventional pressure with one hand while motioning her to be seated with the other.