The snapping and snarling of Floss, who always resented the advent of visitors, now required all Lady Julia's kisses and blandishments to soothe him into the recess of his mother-of-pearl basket; and to Bella it seemed monstrous, incredible, her bearing. Only this morning these women heard of the dire calamity, and they were to all appearance as 'cool as cucumbers'--a little redness they exhibited about the eyes certainly, and a certain subdued manner alone seemed to show that they had in any way laid to heart the death of the poor fellow whose obsequies might have been performed by the birds of the wilderness. Doubtless Bella failed to understand the highly born and long descended; yet in many a gallant field, against both Scots and French, long before even the days of the great Civil War, had her ancestors done good and true yeoman service, with bow and bill, for their acres at Langley Park, under the banner of the Wilmots, with its three eagles' heads--_sable_ and _argent_. At last she rose. 'It is well for you, Lady Julia,' said she, 'that you are able to take this awful dispensation of Providence so calmly as you do.' 'When a thing is inevitable or irreparable, it is best to bow the head and accept it with a good grace,' replied the bereaved mother, closing her fan, but not rising from the fauteuil on which she was reclining, looking gentle and soft, yet iron-bound and icily conventional. 'The loss of an only son, and such a son?' exclaimed Bella, indignation mingling with her grief, as she burst into a flood of irrepressible tears, on which Lady Julia gave her a stare of well-bred astonishment, and asked, 'What do you mean, Miss Chevenix, by this excessive emotion? Have you lost any relation recently that you come almost in black, and with these jet ornaments?' 'No--but I thought--I thought--' stammered Bella. 'You thought--what?' 'That for poor Jerry----' 'Do you mean Captain Wilmot--my son?' asked Lady Julia, icily. 'Yes,' replied Bella, boldly enough now; 'we were such old and good friends that I thought--a little change of dress was but becoming reverence to his memory; and I shall make it deeper still.' 'As you please,' said Lady Julia, bowing curtly, while Cousin Emily rang the bell, and bowed the visitor out. The two ladies then stared at each other. There was a _deduction_ to be drawn from honest Bella's deep, pathetic, and unconcealed interest and grief for the poor dead fellow that proved somewhat offensive to Lady Julia, who, amid her own sorrow--or what she considered such--had been considering the fashion of her own mourning--of mourning for the entire household--and of a handsomely quartered hatchment to 'hang upon the outward wall'; thus she was rather astounded and indignant at the rash or adopted bearing in one of Bella's rank and position; but they savoured, she thought, somewhat of the servants' hall in demonstrativeness.