or refused a sweetmeat; she was, in fact,
just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will
meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of
Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets
flushed after midday dinner, and would sooner miss church than the
postman any day in the year. Such was Molly Lovel at nineteen, honestly
handsome and honestly a fool, whom in Bankside they knew as Long-legged
Moll.

To Amilcare Passavente, the young merchant-adventurer from Leghorn,
ravished as he was by the spell of her cool lips, she became at once "La
divina Maria," or shorter, "La Diva"; and in a very light space of time,
when his acquaintance with her and hers with his tongue had ripened, she
had quite a nosegay of names: Madonna Collebianca (my Lady Whitethroat),
Donna Fiordispina, La Bella Rosseggiante, were three among three dozen
flowers of speech, picked from a highly scented garden of such for her
adorning. Amilcare translated them in his hoarse, eager voice, helped on
by his hands (which were rapid) and his beseeching eyes (which had the
flattery of deference), not only to Molly apart, but to all or any of
her acquaintance who could listen without giggling. Molly pressed her
bosom; her friends, as they loitered home, said in each other's ears,
"Blessed Lord, what will become of Gregory Drax?" Gregory Drax was the
broad-girthed young master of a trading-smack which coasted between
London and Berwick, and was even at that hour in Kirkley Roads, standing
off Yarmouth.

All a summer this endured, but went no further while Amilcare, new to
the blunt ways of the English, was unable to stomach their cropped
speech any better than their sour beer. Those who heard his florid
paraphrase took it gravely, yet held by their "Moll Lovel." They wished
that Gregory Drax might have a fair wind home; they wondered what Master
Lovel was about; trusted that the black-eyed rascal (whose speech was
too glib, surely, to be honest) would not make a fool of the girl. He
very soon showed them that, whatever else he did, he intended to make a
woman of her. Let them hold, said he (for once expressing his contempt),
to their "Molly Lovel"--the name was the Shadow. He would hold, as at
that moment he was very devoutly holding, Molly herself--aha! the
blessed Substance. And when the young Molly let herself go whither her
soft desires had long since fled; when she felt the heart of Am