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 very like."
"Bella, you know it is the same woman. You recognized her in a moment.
That speaks volumes. But she shall find I am not to be made 'a dupe and
a tool of' quite so easily as she thinks. I'll tell you what--this is
some professional actress Sir Charles has hired to waylay you. Little
simpleton!"
He said no more at that time; but after dinner he ruminated, and took a
very serious, indeed almost a maritime, view of the crisis.
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