honour."

Camilla laughed at her maid's alphabet, and perceived her to be more
experienced in love affairs than she said, which she admitted, confessing
to Camilla that she had love passages with a young man of good birth of
the same city. Camilla was uneasy at this, dreading lest it might prove
the means of endangering her honour, and asked whether her intrigue had
gone beyond words, and she with little shame and much effrontery said it
had; for certain it is that ladies' imprudences make servants shameless,
who, when they see their mistresses make a false step, think nothing of
going astray themselves, or of its being known. All that Camilla could do
was to entreat Leonela to say nothing about her doings to him whom she
called her lover, and to conduct her own affairs secretly lest they
should come to the knowledge of Anselmo or of Lothario. Leonela said she
would, but kept her word in such a way that she confirmed Camilla's
apprehension of losing her reputation through her means; for this
abandoned and bold Leonela, as soon as she perceived that her mistress's
demeanour was not what it was wont to be, had the audacity to introduce
her lover into the house, confident that even if her mistress saw him she
would not dare to expose him; for the sins of mistresses entail this
mischief among others; they make themselves the slaves of their own
servants, and are obliged to hide their laxities and depravities; as was
the case with Camilla, who though she perceived, not once but many times,
that Leonela was with her lover in some room of the house, not only did
not dare to chide her, but afforded her opportunities for concealing him
and removed all difficulties, lest he should be seen by her husband. She
was unable, however, to prevent him from being seen on one occasion, as
he sallied forth at daybreak, by Lothario, who, not knowing who he was,
at first took him for a spectre; but, as soon as he saw him hasten away,
muffling his face with his cloak and concealing himself carefully and
cautiously, he rejected this foolish idea, and adopted another, which
would have been the ruin of all had not Camilla found a remedy. It did
not occur to Lothario that this man he had seen issuing at such an
untimely hour from Anselmo's house could have entered it on Leonela's
account, nor did he even remember there was such a person as Leonela; all
he thought was that as Camilla had been light and yielding with him, so
she had been with anothe