interest to get Father Leonard insulted. She
looked on him as her mistress's lover, and her own best friend. "Was I
mad?" said she to herself. "My business is to keep him sweet upon her,
till they can't live without one another: and then I'll tell _him_; and
take your place in this house, my lady."

* * * * *

And now it is time to visit that extraordinary man, who was the cause of
all this mischief; whom Gaunt called a villain, and Mrs. Gaunt a saint;
and, as usual, he was neither, one nor the other.

Father Leonard was a pious, pure, and noble-minded man, who had
undertaken to defy nature, with religion's aid; and, after years of
successful warfare, now sustained one of those defeats to which such
warriors have been liable in every age. If his heart was pure, it was
tender; and nature never intended him to live all his days alone. After
years of prudent coldness to the other sex, he fell in with a creature
that put him off his guard at first, she seemed so angelic. "At Wisdom's
gate suspicion slept": and, by degrees, which have been already
indicated in this narrative, she whom the Church had committed to his
spiritual care became his idol. Could he have foreseen this, it would
never have happened; he would have steeled himself, or left the country
that contained this sweet temptation. But love stole on him, masked with
religious zeal, and robed in a garment of light that seemed celestial.

When the mask fell, it was too late: the power to resist the soft and
thrilling enchantment was gone. The solitary man was too deep in love.

Yet he clung still to that self-deception, without which he never could
have been entrapped into an earthly passion; he never breathed a word of
love to her. It would have alarmed her; it would have alarmed himself.
Every syllable that passed between these two might have been published
without scandal. But the heart does not speak by words alone: there are
looks and there are tones of voice that belong to Love, and are his
signs, his weapons; and it was in these very tones the priest murmured
to his gentle listener about "the angelic life" between spirits still
lingering on earth, but purged from earthly dross; and even about other
topics less captivating to the religious imagination. He had persuaded
her to found a school in this dark parish, and in it he taught the poor
with exemplary and touching patience. Well, when he spoke to her about
this school, it