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 Valencia from the sacred
place of his heart, but failed.
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