“Why, I had as lieve be presented in my smock,” said she, with mediaeval frankness.
“Alack! signorina,” said Gerard, “you have surely never noted the ancient habit; so free, so ample, so simple, yet so noble; and most becoming your highness, to whom Heaven hath given the Roman features, and eke a shapely arm and hand, his in modern guise.”
“What, can you flatter, like the rest, Gerardo? Well, give me time to think on't. Come o' Saturday, and then I will say ay or nay.”
The respite thus gained was passed in making the tunic and toga, etc., and trying them on in her chamber, to see whether they suited her style of beauty well enough to compensate their being a thousand years out of date.
Gerard, hurrying along to this interview, was suddenly arrested, and rooted to earth at a shop window.
His quick eye had discerned in that window a copy of Lactantius lying open. “That is fairly writ, anyway,” thought he.
He eyed it a moment more with all his eyes.
It was not written at all. It was printed.
Gerard groaned.
“I am sped; mine enemy is at the door. The press is in Rome.”