"
"I do not know," replied Gouache, "Prevost was certainly in holy
orders, but I do not know him, as he died rather more than a
hundred years ago. You see the book is not new."
"Oh!" exclaimed Donna Faustina, "I thought it was. Why do you
laugh? Am I very ignorant not to know all about it?"
"No, indeed. Only, you will pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I offer a
suggestion. You see I am French and know a little about these
matters. You will permit me?"
Faustina opened her brown eyes very wide, and nodded gravely.
"If I were you, I would not read that book yet. You are too
young."
"You seem to forget that I am eighteen years old, Monsieur
Gouache."
"No, not at all. But five and twenty is a better age to read such
books. Believe me," he added seriously, "that story is not meant
for you."
Faustina looked at him for a few seconds and then laid the volume
on the table, pushing it away from her with a puzzled air. Gouache
was inwardly much amused at the idea of finding himself the moral
preceptor of a young girl he scarcely knew, in the house of her
parents, who passed for the most strait-laced of their kind. A
feeling of deep resentment against Flavia, however, began to rise
beneath his first sensation of surprise.
"What are books for?" asked Donna Faustina, with a little sigh.
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