shafts hit their mark:  the lady, though she might have forgotten her gown, remembering she had a very becoming stomacher; the gentleman believing that he did give her a lucky penny, and so forth, from very vanity.  Then Moll’s lofty carriage and her beauty would remind them of their dear lost friend, Mrs. Godwin, in the heyday of her youth, and all agreed in admiring her beyond anything.  And though Moll, from her lack of knowledge, made many slips, and would now and then say things uncustomary to women of breeding, yet these were easily attributed to her living so long in a barbarous country, and were as readily glanced over.  Indeed, nothing could surpass Moll’s artificial conduct on these occasions.  She would lard her conversation with those scraps of Italian she learnt from me, and sometimes, affecting to have forgot her own tongue, she would stumble at a word, and turning to Don Sanchez, ask him the English of some Moorish phrase.  Then one day, there being quite a dozen visitors in her state room, she brings down her Moorish dress and those baubles given her by friends at Elche, to show the ladies, much to the general astonishment and wonder; then, being prayed to dress herself in these clothes, she with some hesitation of modesty consents, and after a short absence from the room returns in this costume, looking lovelier than ever I had before seen, with the rings about her shapely bare arms and on her ankles, and thus arrayed she brings me a guitar, and to my strumming sings a Moorish song, swaying her arms above her head and turning gracefully in their fashion, so that all were in an ecstasy with this strange performance.  And the talk spreading, the number of visitors grew apace,—­as bees will flock to honey,—­and yielding to their urgent entreaties, she would often repeat this piece of business, and always with a most winning grace, that charmed every one.  But she was most a favourite of gentlemen and elderly ladies; for the younger ones she did certainly put their noses out of joint, since none could at all compare with her in beauty nor in manner, either, for she had neither the awkward shyness of some nor the boldness of others, but contrived ever to steer neatly betwixt the two extremes by her natural self-possession and fearlessness.

Of all her new friends, the most eager in courting her were Sir Harry Upton and his lady (living in the Crays); and they, being about to go to London for the winter, did press Moll very hard to go with them, that she might be presented to the king; and, truth to tell, they would not have had to ask her twice had she been governed only by her own inclination.  For she was mad to go,—­that audacious spirit of adventure still working very strong in her,—­and she, like a winning gamester, must for ever be playing for higher and higher stakes.  But we, who had heard enough of his excellent but lawless Majesty’s court to fear the fate of any impulsive, beauteous young woman that came within his sway, were quite