At last he resolves to tempt the grimy god of trade once more. Better assets are in his store than a salmon-profile king or maternal majesty, and he knows that the marketing bourgeois will not be hindered by squint of Wilkes from clamouring for his many pictures of Venus, beaming with the soft, dove-like eyes of pretty Miss Angel. So, in the third year after his bankruptcy, he hangs out his sign once more as an honest print-seller at No. 159 in the Strand, near Somerset House, by the corner of Strand Lane, trading as William Wynne Ryland, engraver to his Majesty. From the first the enterprise flourishes. Angelica’s plump little Cupids, drawn in rosy chalk, appeal in their suggestive resemblance to the heart of the British matron; the dainty Angelica Venus, with her large haunting eyes, becomes a pattern of female loveliness; Angelica’s mild and chaste interpretations of classic romance push aside all previous readings. More than all, the Kauffman pinks and yellows, transformed by the deft fingers of the wonderful Welshman into soft, rainbow-tinged impressions--like a delicate painting in water-colours--capture the public fancy. Such engravings never have been seen before, and never will be seen again. It is not strange that No. 159 in the Strand becomes one of the most popular print-shops in London. During those nine years, from 1774 until the spring of 1783, the trade venture of the engraver to his Majesty continues to enjoy great prosperity. Profits reach the sum of two thousand a year, while stock and plant swell to a total of five figures. Few well-fobbed merchants, no chair-sporting City dame, can resist the temptations of that seductive window. A pleasant sight for Miss Angel, that little knot of open-mouthed shop-gazers with burning pockets, as she passes in hackney coach, a vision of clinging drapery in her white Irish polonese. While, if at that moment the happy proprietor steps out, bound for the counting-house of Sir Charles Asgill and his friend Mr Nightingale, with whom he is having some considerable bill of exchange transactions--a glimpse of those large eyes and crest of feathers at the coach window will bring down his laced hat in a sweep of obeisance, as he bows to the knees. Then, after the bankers have discounted all he wants, he will hurry off to Golden Square to show his Miss Angel the last impressions of some of her pictures, glowing in colours, or copied in the popular shade of red. Perhaps, one of these days, as he comes near the studio, a chair may stop as he passes, from which glides a beautiful lady, wearing a crown of glorious hair, brushed from her forehead, who rests her starry eyes upon him for a moment with a slight motion of her tiny rosebud lips. And his heart will beat more quickly as he recognises the woman whose radiant face has brought poor Daniel Perreau and his brother to a shameful death. [Illustration: _IN MEMORY of GENERAL STANWIX’S DAUGHTER who was LOST in her passage from IRELAND.