far learned from them that at fifteen years old she was as
worldly and as familiar with the devices of intrigue as she would be at
forty. So far she had not been pushed to practising them, her singular
life having thrown her among few of her own age, and those had chanced to
be of a sort she disdainfully counted as country bumpkins.

But the young gallant introduced to-night into the world she lived in was
no bumpkin, and was a dandy of the town. His name was Sir John Oxon, and
he had just come into his title and a pretty property. His hands were as
white and bejewelled as her own, his habit was of the latest fashionable
cut, and his fair flowing locks scattered a delicate French perfume she
did not even know the name of.

But though she observed all these attractions and found them powerful,
young Sir John remarked, with a slight sinking qualm, that her great eye
did not fall before his amorous glances, but met them with high smiling
readiness, and her colour never blanched or heightened a whit for all
their masterly skilfulness. But he had sworn to himself that he would
approach close enough to her to fire off some fine speech before the
night was ended, and he endeavoured to bear himself with at least an
outward air of patience until he beheld his opportunity.

When the last dish was removed and bottles and bumpers stood upon the
board, she sprang up on her chair and stood before them all, smiling down
the long table with eyes like flashing jewels. Her hands were thrust in
her pockets--with her pretty young fop's air, and she drew herself to her
full comely height, her beauteous lithe limbs and slender feet set
smartly together. Twenty pairs of masculine eyes were turned upon her
beauty, but none so ardently as the young one's across the table.

"Look your last on my fine shape," she proclaimed in her high, rich
voice. "You will see but little of the lower part of it when it is hid
in farthingales and petticoats. Look your last before I go to don my
fine lady's furbelows."

And when they filled their glasses and lifted them and shouted admiring
jests to her, she broke into one of her stable-boy songs, and sang it in
the voice of a skylark.

No man among them was used to showing her the courtesies of polite
breeding. She had been too long a boy to them for that to have entered
any mind, and when she finished her song, sprang down, and made for the
door, Sir John beheld his long-looked-for chance, and wa