. Try, and you will
see you can't. Of course I was green. Oh! And she said every gentleman
who can afford to keep a saddle-horse has a female friend, till his
banns are called in church. Oh! oh!"

"A pretty statement to come to your ears!"

"But if it is the truth! 'THE TRUTH MAY BE BLAMED, BUT IT CAN'T BE
SHAMED.' Ah! I'll not forget that: I'll pray every night I may remember
those words of the brave lady. Oh!"

"Yes, take her for your oracle."

"I mean to. I always try to profit by my superiors. She has courage: I
have none. I beat about the bush, and talk skim-milk; she uses the very
word. She said we have been the dupe and the tool of a little scheming
rascal, an anonymous coward, with motives as base as his heart is
black--oh! oh! Ay, that is the way to speak of such a man; I can't do
it myself, but I reverence the brave lady who can. And she wasn't
afraid even of you, dear papa. 'Come, old gentleman'--ha! ha!
ha!--'take the world as it is; Belgravian mothers would not break
_both_ their hearts for what is past and gone.' What hard good sense! a
thing I always _did_ admire: because I've got none. But her _heart_ is
not hard; after all her words of fire, that went so straight instead of
beating the bush, she ended by crying for me. Oh! oh! oh! Bless her!
Bless her! If ever there was a good woman in the world, that is one.
She was not born a lady, I am afraid; but that is nothing: she was born
a woman, and I mean to make her acquaintance, and take her for my
example in all things. No, dear papa, women are not so pitiful to women
without cause. She is almost a stranger, yet she cried for me. Can you
be harder to me than she is? No; pity your poor girl, who will lose her
health, and perhaps her life. Pity poor Charles, stung by an anonymous
viper, and laid on a bed of sickness for me. Oh! oh! oh!"

"I do pity you, Bella. When you cry like this, my heart bleeds."

"I'll try not to cry, papa. Oh! oh!"

"But most of all, I pity your infatuation, your blindness. Poor,
innocent dove, that looks at others by the light of her own goodness,
and so sees all manner of virtues in a brazen hussy. Now answer me one
plain question. You called her 'the Sister!' Is she not the same woman
that played the Sister of Charity?"

Bella blushed to the temples, and said, hesitatingly, she was not quite
sure.

"Come, Bella. I thought you were going to imitate the jade, and not
beat about the bush. Yes or no?"

"The features are ve