s embarrassed on his part.

The handsome, rosy face of a strapping tavern wench would not have
startled him, but he was not gazing upon a bouncing serving maid or
the hoydenish daughter of a prosperous innkeeper. He beheld a creature
in all the gentle bloom of highbred beauty--tall, well-formed, and
radiating a sort of natural elegance, with a fine-shaped, expressive
face, to which great speaking eyes and a mouth half pensive, half
smiling, lent an air of rare distinction. These were the eyes which
in after years Anne would half close in a roguish way, as when, for
instance, she meditated a brilliant stroke as Lady Betty Modish, and
then, opening them defiantly, would make them glisten with the spirit
of twinkling comedy. These were the eyes, too, which would shine forth
such unutterable love when she played Cleopatra that one might well
pardon the peccadilloes of poor Antony. But as yet there was no
thought of drooping eyelids or amorous glances; all was natural, and
nothing more so than the coyness of Nance upon seeing the author of
"Love and a Bottle."

Captain Farquhar had never before beheld this seamstress from King
Street, Westminster, but she must have been familiar with the handsome
figure of one who had drunk many a brimming glass at the Mitre Tavern.
Thus, when he made bold to praise her elocution, she was not offended,
and, although she ignored his request to continue the "Scornful Lady,"
Anne proved sufficiently mistress of the interruption to astonish the
intruder by her "discourse and sprightly wit." That innate breeding,
of which no amount of poverty could deprive her, came to the surface,
to show that a woman of quality is none the worse for a surprise.
Farquhar, bowing low with a grace that made his faded clothes seem the
pink of fashion, poured forth a torrent of flowery compliments, which
became all the stronger when he heard that the girl knew Beaumont and
Fletcher nearly by heart. She must have blushed, looking prettier than
ever, as the visitor went on; and how that young heart did leap as
he predicted for her a glorious future on the stage! The stage! the
_Ultima Thule_ of all her hopes! The very idea of acting filled her
head with a thousand bewildering fancies, and, as she told Chetwood in
after years, "I longed to be at it, and only wanted a little decent
intreaties."

The decent intreaties were forthcoming. Nance's mother, who evidently
rejoiced in a prophetic spirit not given to all paren