One evening, when he had found Elvira almost perfectly restored to health, he quitted her earlier than was his usual custom. Not finding Antonia in the antechamber, he ventured to follow her to her own. It was only separated from her mother’s by a closet, in which Flora, the waiting-woman, generally slept. Antonia sat upon a sofa with her back towards the door, and read attentively. She heard not his approach, till he had seated himself by her. She started, and welcomed him with a look of pleasure: then rising, she would have conducted him to the sitting-room; but Ambrosio taking her hand, obliged her by gentle violence to resume her place. She complied without difficulty: she knew not that there was more impropriety in conversing with him in one room than another. She thought herself equally secure of his principles and her own, and having replaced herself upon the sofa, she began to prattle to him with her usual ease and vivacity.

He examined the book which she had been reading, and had now placed upon the table. It was the Bible.

“How!” said the friar to himself; “Antonia reads the Bible, and is still so ignorant?”

But, upon a further inspection, he found that Elvira had made exactly the same remark. That prudent mother, while she admired the beauties of the sacred writings, was convinced that, unrestricted, no reading more improper could be permitted a young woman. Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: everything is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the book which young women are recommended to study; which is put into the hands of children, able to comprehend little more than those passages of which they had better remain ignorant; and which but too frequently inculcates the first rudiments of vice, and gives the first alarm to the still sleeping passions. Of this was Elvira so fully convinced, that she would have preferred putting into her daughter’s hands Amadis de Gaul , or The Valiant Champion, Tirante the White ; and would sooner have authorised her studying the lewd exploits of Don Galaor , or the lascivious jokes of the