ld-fashioned creature you are!" answers she, testily.
"Don't you know that 'tis the mode now for ladies to wear spots? Signor
Dario," adds she, her eyes lighting up, "finds it mighty becoming." When
I saw her thus disfiguring her pretty face (as I considered it then,
though I came to admire this embellishment later on) to please Signor
Dario, I began to ask myself how this business was likely to end.

CHAPTER XX.

_Of Moll's ill humour and what befel thereby._

Feeling, in the absence of Dawson, that I stood in the position of a
guardian to his daughter, and was responsible for her welfare, my mind
grew very uneasy about the consequences of her extravagant admiration
for the painter; and, knowing that Don Sanchez, despite his phlegmatic
humour, loved Moll very sincerely at heart, I took him aside one day,
and asked him if he had observed nothing particular in Moll's behaviour
of late.

"One would be blind," says he, "not to see that she is enamoured of
Dario, if that's what you mean."

I admitted that my suspicions inclined that way, and, explaining my
concern on her behalf, I asked him what he would do in my place.

"In my country," says he, "matters never would have been suffered to go
so far, and Mistress Judith would have been shut up a prisoner in her
room these past three weeks. But I doubt if our maidens are any the
safer or better for such treatment, and I am quite sure that such
treatment would be worse than useless for an English girl, and
especially such an one as this. For, guard her how you might, she would
assuredly find means to break her prison, and then no course is open to
her but to throw herself in the arms of the man she loves, trusting to
mere accident whether he abuses her devotion or not. You might as well
strive to catch the wind and hold it as stay and stem the course of
youthful passion."

"Aye, Senor," says I, "this may be all very true. But what should you do
in my place?"

"Nothing," says he.

This was a piece of advice which set me scratching my head in
dubitation.

"Beware," continues he, "how you suggest the thing you fear to one who
needs but a hint to act. I have great faith in the natural modesty of
women (and I do think no child more innocent than Mistress Judith),
which, though it blind them to their danger, does, at the same time,
safeguard them against secret and illicit courses of more fatal
consequences. Let her discourse with him, openly, since it pleases