To prepare for these early excursions, Mistress Moll, though commonly disposed to lie abed late in the morning, must have been up by daybreak.  And, despite her admiration of Dario’s simplicity in dress, she showed no inclination to follow his example in this particular; but, on the contrary, took more pains in adorning her person at this time than ever she had done before; and as she would dress her hair no two mornings alike, so she would change the fashion of her dress with the same inconstancy until the sly hussy discovered which did most please Dario’s taste; then a word of approval from him, nay, a glance, would suffice to fix her choice until she found that his admiration needed rekindling.  And so, as if her own imagination was not sufficiently forcible, she would talk of nothing with her friends but the newest fashions at court, with the result that her maids were for ever a-brewing some new wash for her face (which she considered too brown), compounding charms to remove a little mole she had in the nape of her neck, cutting up one gown to make another, and so forth.  One day she presented herself with a black patch at the corner of her lip, and having seen nought of this fashion before, I cried out in alarm: 

“Lord, child! have you injured your face with that mess Betty was stewing yesterday?”

“What an absurd, old-fashioned creature you are!” answers she, testily.  “Don’t you know that ’tis the mode now for ladies to wear spots?  Signor Dario,” adds she, her eyes lighting up, “finds it mighty becoming.”  When I saw her thus disfiguring her pretty face (as I considered it then, though I came to admire this embellishment later on) to please Signor Dario, I began to ask myself how this business was likely to end.

CHAPTER XX.

Of Moll’s ill humour and what befel thereby.

Feeling, in the absence of Dawson, that I stood in the position of a guardian to his daughter, and was responsible for her welfare, my mind grew very uneasy about the consequences of her extravagant admiration for the painter; and, knowing that Don Sanchez, despite his phlegmatic humour, loved Moll very sincerely at heart, I took him aside one day, and asked him if he had observed nothing particular in Moll’s behaviour of late.

“One would be blind,” says he, “not to see that she is enamoured of Dario, if that’s what you mean.”

I admitted that my suspicions inclined that way, and, explaining my concern on her behalf, I asked him what he would do in my place.

“In my country,” says he, “matters never would have been suffered to go so far, and Mistress Judith would have been shut up a prisoner in her room these past three weeks.  But I doubt if our maidens are any the safer or better for such treatment, and I am quite sure that such treatment would be worse than useless for an English girl, and especially such an one as this.  For, guard her how you might, she would assuredly find means to break her prison, and then no course is open to her but to throw herself in the arms of the man she loves, trusting to mere accident whether he abuses her devotion or not.  You might as well strive to catch the wind and hold it as stay and stem the course of youthful passion.”