that she didn't want to be 'poored by pa', or anybody else.

'I am sure you do not, my dear,' returned her mother, 'for you have a
fine brave spirit. And your sister Cecilia has a fine brave spirit
of another kind, a spirit of pure devotion, a beau-ti-ful spirit! The
self-sacrifice of Cecilia reveals a pure and womanly character, very
seldom equalled, never surpassed. I have now in my pocket a letter from
your sister 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.