Johannes Sargent, that swift giant from the New World, had already flung her on canvas, with a brace of sisters.  She outstands there, a virgin poplar-tall; hair like ravelled flax and coiffed in the fashion of the period; neck like a giraffe’s; lips shaped for kissing rather than smiling; eyes like a giraffe’s again; breasts like a boy’s, and something of a dressed-up boy in the total aspect of her.  She has arms a trifle long even for such height as hers; fingers very long, too, with red-pink nails trimmed to a point.  She looks out slantwise, conscious of her beauty, and perhaps of certain other things.  Fire under that ice, I conjecture—­red corpuscles rampant behind that meek white mask of hers. “Forsitan in hoc anno pulcherrima debutantium” is the verdict of a contemporary journal.  For “forsitan” read “certe.”  No slur, that, on the rest of the bevy.

Very much as Johannes had seen her did she appear now to the cits, as the cabriolet swung past them.  Paramount there, she was still more paramount here.  Yet this Geoffrey was not ill-looking.  In the secret journal of Mary Jane, serving-wench in the palace of Geoffrey’s father (who gat his barony by beer) note is made of his “lovely blue eyes; complexion like a blush rose; hands like a girl’s; lips like a girl’s again; yellow curls close cropped; and for moustachio (so young is he yet) such a shadow as amber might cast on water.”

Here, had I my will, I would limn you Mary Jane herself, that parched nymph.  Time urges, though.  The cabrioleteer thrashes his horse (me with it) to a canter, and plunges into Soho.  Some wagon athwart the path gives pause.  Angelica, looking about her, bites lip.  For this is the street of Wardour, wherein (say all the chronicles most absolutely) she and Geoffrey had first met and plit their troth.

“Methinks,” cries she, loud and clear to the wagoner, and pointing finger at Geoffrey, “the Devil must be between your shafts, to make a mock of me in this conjunction, the which is truly of his own doing.”

“Sweet madam,” says Geoffrey (who was also called “The Ready"), “shall I help harness you at his side?  Though, for my part, I doubt ’twere supererogant, in that he buckled you to his service or ever the priest dipped you.”

A bitter jest, this; and the thought of it still tingled on the girl’s cheek and clawed her heart when Geoffrey handed her down at the portico of Drury Lane Theatre.  A new pantomime was afoot.  Geoffrey’s father (that bluff red baron) had chartered a box, was already there with his lady and others.

Lily among peonies, Angelica sat brooding, her eyes fastened on the stage, Geoffrey behind her chair, brooding by the same token.  Presto, he saw a flood of pink rush up her shoulders to her ears.  The “principal boy” had just skipped on to the stage.  No boy at all (God be witness), but one Mistress Tina Vandeleur, very apt in masquerado, and seeming true boy enough to the guileless.  Stout of leg, light-footed, with a tricksy plume to his cap, and the swagger of one who would beard the Saints for a wager, this Aladdin was just such a galliard as Angelica had often fondled in her dreams.  He lept straight into the closet of her heart, and “Deus!” she cried, “maugre my maidenhood, I will follow those pretty heels round the earth!”