'That, Will, is the first step upwards of your cousin's wife. From the gutter to the pit of Drury Lane as an Orange girl. There was a step for me! Yes. I looked like that: I behaved like that: I was as shameless as that: I used to talk to the men in the Pit as they talk--you know the kind of talk. And now, Will, confess: you are heartily ashamed of me.' 'Jenny!' Like the noble Lord, I kissed her fingers. 'Believe me, I am not in the least ashamed of you.' 'The next step was to the stage. That, Will, was pure luck. The Manager heard me imitating the actors and actresses--and himself. He saw me dancing to please the other girls--I used to dance to please the people in the Black Jack. He took a fancy in his head that I was clever. He took me from among the other girls: he gave me instruction: and presently a speaking part. That is the whole history. I have told you all--I never told these things to Matthew--why should I? But to my Lord, I told all----' 'Yes--and he was not ashamed.' 'No--but he did not like the applause of the rogues, and the orange girls. While the highwaymen applauded in the pit and the pickpockets in the Gallery, the Orange Girls were telling all the people that once I was one of them with my basket of oranges like the rest--and so it was agreed that I was to leave the stage and go away into the country out of the way of all the old set.' 'And then.' 'Then I could no longer oblige my Lord. I left it to oblige myself and to marry Matthew.' She sat down and buried her face in her hands. 'But I loved my Lord,' she said. 'I loved my Lord.' CHAPTER V THE BLACK JACK Jenny finished her story, much as you have heard it, though some has been forgotten. 'And now,' she said, 'I will take you to the very place where I was born. You shall see for yourself the house, and my mother and my sister and the company among whom I was brought up. Wait for a moment while I change my dress. I cannot go like this. And I do not want all of them to learn where I now live.' She returned in a few minutes dressed in the garb of an orange girl of Drury. Everybody knows how these girls are attired; a frock of the commonest linsey-woolsey; a kerchief over her head tied under her chin: another kerchief round her neck and bosom; her sleeves coming down to her elbows; on her arm a round deep basket filled with oranges. But no orange girl ever had so sweet a face; so fine a carriage; hands and arms so white. Nor could any disguise deprive this lovely creature of her beauty or rob her face of its pure and virginal expression. That such a being should come out of the Black Jack! But then we find the white lily growing beside a haystack or a pigsty and none the less white and delicate and fragrant.