Then in that cold early dawn appeared the letter, requesting his immediate appearance at the Director's Office of the East India Company, should this coincide with his convenience. He found its tone ominous. Was some merchant planning to have him jailed for his loss of cargo to the Turks? But he'd been sailing for the Levant Company, not the East India Company. He debated with himself all morning, and finally decided to go. And face the mercantile bastards. The new offices of the Company already seemed embalmed in the smell of lamp oil and sweat, their freshly painted wood timbers masked in dull soot. A stale odor of ink, paper, and arid commerce assailed his senses as he was announced and ushered through the heavy oak door of the Director's suite. And he was astonished by what awaited. Standing hard by the Director's desk--was Maggie. He'd searched the length of London in vain for her, and here she was. But he almost didn't recognize her. Their two years apart had brought a change beyond anything he could have imagined. No one would have guessed what she once had been, a dockside girl happiest at the Southwark bear-gardens, or in a goose-down bed. And somehow she had always managed to turn a shilling at both--wagering with a practiced eye on the snarling dogs brought in to bloody the bears, or taking her pleasure only after deftly extracting some loan, to allay an urgent need she inevitably remembered the moment she entered his lodgings. That morning, however, she reigned like an exotic flower, flourishing amid the mercantile gloom. She was dressed and painted in the very latest upper-class style--her red hair now bleached deep yellow, sprinkled thick with gold dust, and buried under a feathered hat; her crushed-velvet bodice low-necked, cut fashionably just below the nipples, then tied at the neck with a silk lace ruff; her once-ruddy breasts now painted pale, with blue veins penciled in; and her face carefully powdered lead-white, save the red dye on her lips and cheeks and the glued-on beauty patches of stars and half-moons. His dockside girl had become a completely modern lady of fashion. He watched in disbelief as she curtsied to him, awkwardly. Then he noticed Sir Randolph Spencer, Director of the Company.