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.

Elsie took Agnes down with her to the old stand in the gateway of the
town. On their way, as had probably been arranged, Antonio met them.
We may have introduced him to the reader before, who likely enough has
forgotten by this time our portraiture; so we shall say again, that the
man was past thirty, tall, straight, well-made, even to the tapering of
his well-formed limbs, as are the generality of the peasantry of that
favored region. His teeth were white as sea-pearl; his cheek, though
swarthy, had a deep, healthy flash; and his great velvet black eyes
looked straight out from under their long silky lashes, just as do the
eyes of the beautiful oxen of his country, with a languid, changeless
tranquillity, betokening a good digestion, and a well-fed, kindly animal