The fair being herself, whose early instruction had given birth to so
many skilful imitations of the divine expression of Raphael, or to the
vivid tints of Titian, was at that hour in her privacy, discoursing with
her ghostly adviser, and one of her own sex, who had long discharged the
joint trusts of instructor and parent. The years of the lady of the
palace were so tender that, in a more northern region, she would
scarcely have been deemed past the period of childhood, though in her
native land, the justness and maturity of her form, and the expression
of a dark, eloquent eye, indicated both the growth and the intelligence
of womanhood.
"For this good counsel I thank you, my father, and my excellent Donna
Florinda will thank you still more, for your opinions are so like her
own, that I sometimes admire the secret means by which experience
enables the wise and the good to think so much alike, on a matter of so
little personal interest."
A slight but furtive smile struggled around the mortified mouth of the
Carmelite, as he listened to the naive observation of his ingenuous
pupil.
"Thou wilt learn, my child," he answered, "as time heaps wisdom on thy
head, that it is in concerns which touch our passions and interests
least, we are most apt to decide with discretion and impartiality.
Though Donna Florinda is not yet past the age when the heart is finally
subdued, and there is still so much to bind her to the world, she will
assure thee of this truth, or I greatly mistake the excellence of that
mind, which hath hitherto led her so far blameless, in this erring
pilgrimage to which we are all doomed.
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