UP ON THE STAGE IN Neville's Court, the plot was thickening, or, depending on how you liked your plots, expanding into a froth. Miss Straddle, played by Tess, was flirting with Eugene Stopcock, an infantry officer, who had rushed in from London to rescue his shipwrecked parents. Tom Runagate had already been to bed at least once with Lydia van Underdevater. The courtier Francis Buggermy had showed up incognito and begun chasing the slave Nzinga around in hopes of verifying certain rumors about the size of African men.