"Queen of the Wells! Queen of the Wells!" And Nancy, in her pretty, saucy way, ran and stood beside me laughing. "And I am her Majesty's maid of honour. Remember that, gentlemen all!" "The saucy baggage!" cried Sir Robert. And Peggy Baker, for whom in this hour of triumph one felt a little pity, came too, with a curtsey and a smile which looked more like a frown. "Miss Pleydell must accept my homage, too," she said. "We are fortunate in having one so inimitably lovely for our Queen. It makes one wonder where so much beauty could have been hidden." I suppose she meant this as an innuendo that I was not, therefore, accustomed to such good company. I thought of Fleet Lane and the Market, and I laughed aloud. But Lord Chudleigh was expected to dance with another lady before the ball was opened; and here was another disappointment for poor Peggy, for he led out Nancy, who took his hand with a pride and joy which did one's heart good to look at. If I had been afraid to raise my eyes, Nancy was not; she looked in my lord's face and laughed; she talked and prattled all the time she was dancing; and she danced as if the music was too slow for her, as if she would fain have been spinning round like a school-girl when she makes cheeses, as if her limbs were springs, as if she would gladly have taken her partner by both hands and run round and round with him as she had so often done with me when we were children together, playing in the meadows beside the Hall. All the people looked on and laughed and clapped their hands; never was so merry a minuet, if that stately dance could ever be made merry. As for me, I was able to look at his face again, though that was only to begin the punishment of my crime. What did I remember of him? A tall young man of slender figure; with cheeks red and puffed, a forehead on which the veins stood out ready to burst, a hand that shook, eyes that looked wildly round him; a dreadful, terrible, and shameful memory. But now, how changed! As for his features, I hardly recognised them at all. Yet I knew him for the same man. Go get a cunning limner and painter. Make him draw you a face stamped with some degrading vice, or taken at the moment of committing some grievous sin against the conscience. Suppose, for instance, that the cheeks swell out with gluttony; or let the lips tremble with intemperance; or let the eyes grow keen and hawk-like with gambling: let any vice he pleases be stamped upon that face. Then let him go away and draw that face (which before was dark with sin and marked with the seal of the Devil) as it should be, pure, wise, and noble as God, who hath somewhere laid by the model and type of every created face, intended it to be. You will know it and you will know it not.