Your interest and happiness are equally mine. Be your person Antonia’s,
but to your friendship and your heart I still assert my claim.
Contributing to yours forms now my only pleasure. Should my exertions
procure the gratification of your wishes, I shall consider my trouble
to be amply repaid. But let us lose no time. The liquor of which I
spoke is only to be found in St. Clare’s Laboratory. Hasten then to the
Prioress; Request of her admission to the Laboratory, and it will not
be denied. There is a Closet at the lower end of the great Room, filled
with liquids of different colours and qualities. The Bottle in question
stands by itself upon the third shelf on the left. It contains a
greenish liquor: Fill a small phial with it when you are unobserved,
and Antonia is your own.”
The Monk hesitated not to adopt this infamous plan. His desires, but
too violent before, had acquired fresh vigour from the sight of
Antonia. As He sat by her bedside, accident had discovered to him some
of those charms which till then had been concealed from him: He found
them even more perfect, than his ardent imagination had pictured them.
Sometimes her white and polished arm was displayed in arranging the
pillow: Sometimes a sudden movement discovered part of her swelling
bosom: But whereever the new-found charm presented itself, there rested
the Friar’s gloting eyes. Scarcely could He master himself sufficiently
to conceal his desires from Antonia and her vigilant Duenna. Inflamed
by the remembrance of these beauties, He entered into Matilda’s scheme
without hesitation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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