Had she--but a truce to that.

What passed is enough; with what might have, my story would stretch to the world's end.
I smothered my remorse, and went up to the stranger, bidding her good-day in my most polite and courtly manner; she smiled, but at what I knew not.

She seemed little more than a child, sixteen years old or seventeen at the most, yet there was no confusion in her greeting of me.
Indeed, she was most marvellously at her ease, for, on my salute, she cried, lifting her hands in feigned amazement, "A man, by my faith; a man in this place!" Well pleased to be called a man, I bowed again.
"Or at least," she added, "what will be one, if it please Heaven." "You may live to see it without growing wrinkled," said I, striving to conceal my annoyance.
"And one that has repartee in him! Oh, marvellous!" "We do not all lack wit in the country, madame," said I, simpering as I supposed the Court gallants to simper, "nor, since the plague came to London, beauty." "Indeed, it's wonderful," she cried in mock admiration.

"Do they teach such sayings hereabouts, sir ?" "Even so, madame, and from such books as your eyes furnish." And for all her air of mockery, I was, as I remember, much pleased with this speech.
It had come from some well-thumbed romance, I doubt not.

I was always an eager reader of such silly things.
She curtseyed low, laughing up at me with roguish eyes and mouth.
"Now, surely, sir," she said, "you must be Simon Dale, of whom my host the gardener speaks ?" "It is my name, madame, at your service.