to
chat with whom she chose, she made Lucia ask Frank to tea; and next
contrived to go to the school when he was teaching there, and to make
Elsley ask him to walk with them; and all the more, because she had
discovered that Elsley had discontinued his walks with Frank, as soon
as she had appeared at Penalva.

Lucia was not sorry to countenance her in her naughtiness; it was a
comfort to her to have a fourth person in the room at times, and thus
to compel Elsley and Valencia to think of something beside each other;
and when she saw her sister gradually transferring her favours from
the married to the unmarried victim, she would have been more than
woman if she had not rejoiced thereat. Only, she began soon to be
afraid for Frank, and at last told Valencia so.

"Do take care that you do not break his heart!"

"My dear! You forget that I sit under Mr. O'Blareaway, and am to him
as a heathen and a publican. Fresh from St. Nepomuc's as he is, he
would as soon think of falling in love with an 'Oirish Prodestant,'
as with a malignant and a turbaned Turk. Besides, my dear, if the
mischief is going to be done, it's done already."

"I dare say it is, you naughty beautiful thing. If anybody is goose
enough to fall in love with you, he'll be also goose enough, I don't
doubt, to do so at first sight. There, don't look perpetually in that
glass: but take care!"

"What use? If it is going to happen at all, I say, it has happened
already; so I shall just please myself, as usual."

And it had happened: and poor Frank had been, ever since the first day
he saw Valencia, over head and ears in love. His time had come, and
there was no escaping his fate.

But to escape he tried. Convinced, with many good men of all ages and
creeds, that a celibate life was the fittest one for a clergyman, he
had fled from St. Nepomuc's into the wilderness to avoid temptation,
and beheld at his cell-door a fairer fiend than ever came to St.
Dunstan. A fairer fiend, no doubt; for St. Dunstan's imagination
created his temptress for him, but Valencia was a reality: and fact
and nature may be safely backed to produce something more charming
than any monk's brain can do. One questions whether St. Dunstan's
apparition was not something as coarse as his own mind, clever though
that mind was. At least, he would never have had the heart to apply
the hot tongs to such a nose as Valencia's, but at most have bowed
her out pityingly, as Frank tried to bow out Va