the reigns of William or Anne.

In the meantime we are almost forgetting young Mistress Oldfield, who
is still reading the "Scornful Lady," and putting new life and grace
into lines which nowadays seem a bit academic and musty. The captain
has not forgotten her, however; on the contrary, he is so charmed with
what he hears that he makes some flimsy excuse to get into that room
behind the bar whence the silvery voice proceeds. There he first meets
Nance, surrounded by what audience we know not, and is struck dumb at
the lovely figure standing out in bashful relief, as it were, against
a background of wine bottles and ale tankards. There is an awkward
pause, no doubt, and if the girl of fifteen comes to a sudden stop in
her recital, Farquhar is no less 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."