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.