d kite of a cavalier that has been sailing and
perching round. We are two lone women here, and the times are unsettled,
and one never knows, that hath so fair a prize, but she may be carried
off, and then no redress from any quarter."

"You might lodge her in the convent," said the monk.

"Yes, and then, the first thing I should know, they would have got her
away from me entirely. I have been well pleased to have her much with
the sisters hitherto, because it kept her from hearing the foolish talk
of girls and gallants,--and such a flower would have had every wasp and
bee buzzing round it. But now the time is coming to marry her, I much
doubt these nuns. There's old Jocunda is a sensible woman, who knew
something of the world before she went there,--but the Mother Theresa
knows no more than a baby; and they would take her in, and make her as
white and as thin as that moon yonder now the sun has risen; and little
good should I have of her, for I have no vocation for the convent,--it
would kill me in a week. No,--she has seen enough of the convent for the
present. I will even take the risk of watching her myself. Little has
this gallant seen of her, though he has tried hard enough! But to-day I
may venture to take her down with me."

Father Antonio felt a little conscience-smitten in listening to these
triumphant assertions of old Elsie; for he knew that she would pour all
her vials of wrath on his head, did she know, that, owing to his absence
from his little charge, the dreaded invader had managed to have two
interviews with her grandchild, on the very spot that Elsie deemed the
fortress of security; but he wisely kept his own counsel, believing in
the eternal value of silence. In truth, the gentle monk lived so much
in the unreal and celestial world of Beauty, that he was by no means
a skilful guide for the passes of common life. Love, other than that
ethereal kind which aspires towards Paradise, was a stranger to his
thoughts, and he constantly erred in attributing to other people natures
and purposes as unworldly and spiritual as his own. Thus had he fallen,
in his utter simplicity, into the attitude of a go-between protecting
the advances of a young lover with the shadow of his monk's gown, and
he became awkwardly conscious, that, if Elsie should find out the whole
truth, there would be no possibility of convincing her that what had
been done in such sacred simplicity on all sides was not the basest
manoeuvring.