Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 174: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XVII AN AMAZON Axsour thirty-five years previous to the date mentioned at the opening of this tale, a certain Letitia Fluke was born in a miserable attic in Lukner’s Lane, St. Giles’s. As she grew up, she became remarkable for the beauty of her person, the masculine energy of her character, and the profligacy of her morals. Seduced by Rann, the celebrated highwayman who bore the sobriquet of “ Sixteen-string Jack,’ she lived with him as his mistress for some time; and being endowed with extraordinary intelligence, she taught herself not only the rudiments of a good education, but likewise acquired the facility of expressing herself with grammatical accuracy and conversational elegance. After passing through various gradations, she married Sir John Lade, a wealthy and amorous baronet who was old enough to be her grandfather; and, on becoming Lady Letitia Lade, she soon wheedled herself into that sort of society at the West End which may be described as *‘ not overparticular.’’ Her great personal beauty, splendid figure, easy virtue, and proficiency in all the sports of the field rendered her a special favourite with the dashing noblemen and gentlemen about town, and her reputation as a huntress was second only to that of her friend Tim Meagles as a hunter. She rode exquisitely — was always one of the foremost in at the death — and could leap a five-barred gate or practise any of the most daring feats characteristic of steeplechasing. This lady was it whom Meagles had brought with him to the prince’s room on the present occasion. She was, however, dressed in male attire, which became her admirably, and had it not been for the fulness of her bosom she might have been taken by a stranger for a man, though, as a 157 Gomichboo CS (E(0)