astily replied: "I think not of him; though it is
true some courtesies have passed betwixt us of late, both as he is my
father's friend and as being according to the custom of the time, my
Valentine."

"Your Valentine, my child!" said Father Clement. "And can your modesty
and prudence have trifled so much with the delicacy of your sex as to
place yourself in such a relation to such a man as this artificer? Think
you that this Valentine, a godly saint and Christian bishop, as he is
said to have been, ever countenanced a silly and unseemly custom, more
likely to have originated in the heathen worship of Flora or Venus,
when mortals gave the names of deities to their passions; and studied to
excite instead of restraining them?"

"Father," said Catharine, in a tone of more displeasure than she had
ever before assumed to the Carthusian, "I know not upon what ground you
tax me thus severely for complying with a general practice, authorised
by universal custom and sanctioned by my father's authority. I cannot
feel it kind that you put such misconstruction upon me."

"Forgive me, daughter," answered the priest, mildly, "if I have given
you offence. But this Henry Gow, or Smith, is a forward, licentious
man, to whom you cannot allow any uncommon degree of intimacy
and encouragement, without exposing yourself to worse
misconstruction--unless, indeed, it be your purpose to wed him, and that
very shortly."

"Say no more of it, my father," said Catharine. "You give me more pain
than you would desire to do; and I may be provoked to answer otherwise
than as becomes me. Perhaps I have already had cause enough to make
me repent my compliance with an idle custom. At any rate, believe that
Henry Smith is nothing to me, and that even the idle intercourse arising
from St. Valentine's Day is utterly broken off."

"I am rejoiced to hear it, my daughter," replied the Carthusian, "and
must now prove you on another subject, which renders me most anxious on
your behalf. You cannot your self be ignorant of it, although I could
wish it were not necessary to speak of a thing so dangerous, even,
before these surrounding rocks, cliffs, and stones. But it must be said.
Catharine, you have a lover in the highest rank of Scotland's sons of
honour?"

"I know it, father," answered Catharine, composedly. "I would it were
not so."

"So would I also," said the priest, "did I see in my daughter only the
child of folly, which most young women are at he