alms._

BENEDICTUS BENEDICAT.

I cry you mercy for a lacuna at the outset. I know not what had
knitted and blackened the brows of certain two speeding eastward
through London, enhansomed, on the night of the feast of St. Box:
_alter_, Geoffrey Dizzard, called "The Honourable," _lieu-tenant_ in
the Guards of Edward the Peace Getter; _altera_, the Lady Angelica
Plantagenet, to him affianced. Devil take the cause of the bicker:
enough that they were at sulks. Here's for a sight of the girl!

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 t