"If I possess him, I may be unhappy,
But, if I lose him, I am surely so."

Meanwhile a different scene was being enacted earlier in Cowley Street, Lambeth, or, as it was more often termed, Cowley Street, Westminster--a spot now quaint and old, but then almost fresh and new; a street to which, then as now, there would come from the river a wafted scent of new-mown hay (especially in the warm days of harvest-time, when windows were open), brought up or down the river in great cumbrous barges for sale in London; a quiet place which was then as peaceful and tranquil as the streets of old country towns are now.

All through the day which preceded that night when Beau Bufton had celebrated his last hours of bachelor freedom, as he had cynically termed the conclusion of his unwedded life, Ariadne Thorne had either sat in the great parlour on the lower floor--a floor raised some three or four feet above the level of the road and narrow footway outside--had sat glancing eagerly out of the long windows which faced the walls that enclosed the grounds of the Abbey, or, pacing the spacious room, had given herself up to uneasy thoughts.

"Will he ever come?" she whispered to herself again and again, "or, coming, ever forgive me for what I have done--am about to do? I pray God he may."

Then, almost distraught, she would seize the long bell-rope and summon Mrs. Pottle to her presence, who, entering with a look of strange, hard determination on her strong features, would stand before her mistress ready to answer, for the twentieth time, any questions that might be asked her, and ready also to dispel any doubts which might exist in the girl's perturbed mind.

"He must have received my letter," Ariadne would then say; "must have had it in his hands by yesterday morning at the latest. Must he not, Pottle?"

"In truth he must," her old nurse and attendant from the first would say; "he must indeed, deary."

"And, receiving it, would come. Surely he would come, Rebecca," addressing the woman now, as most often she did, by her Christian name.

"I think so, dear heart; that is, if the frigate ain't----"

"Sailed! Oh, my God!" Ariadne cried, "if it has done that! If it has gone to join Admiral Boscawen's fleet in the West Indies. If it has done that! Then--then my heart is broken."

"P'r'aps, it ain't sailed after all. Don't weep, sweet one. P'r'aps it ain't. Look at that vane out there on the Abbey. The wind is west--doo west. He won't get out o' the Channel ag'in that, let alone off to the Injies. I remember when we were going in the R'yal Suverin----"

"If he would only come. Only come once--for an hour--half an hour--so--so--that I could make all clear to him. Could sue to him for pardon and for pity."

"Humph!" Mrs. Pottle exclaimed, with a snort, "he ain't got so very much to pardon nor to pity, I don't think. Pardon and pity! Hoity-toity! You've writ him, ain't you?"

"Ay, indeed I have! Yet I could not tell him all then--could not do so until he stands here before me. Oh! Rebecca, Rebecca, what have I done! What have we done!"

"Done what we oughter. That is, I have; what I agreed to do, if things turn out well. You ain't done nothin' as you oughtn't to do, and 'ave been an angel, as you always was. And cheer up, missy, he'll come; I know as how he will."

"I pray God," Ariadne said again, "I pray God he will."

A few days before this conversation took place, the girl, after considerable communing with herself, had despatched a letter addressed to Captain Sir Geoffrey Barry on board H.M.S. Mignonne at Portsmouth; a letter cold in tone, it is true, and one in which there was no acknowledgment, as well as no denial, of her having been false to him, or of her having received a visit from the person whom he had encountered in the lime-tree avenue of her estate. For neither, she knew, would weigh anything with him--he would disbelieve her denial, while, on the other hand, her confession that such was the case would prevent him from ever speaking to her again. And she so much desired to see him before to-morrow; to see him before he sailed, as she had heard he was about to do, to join Admiral Boscawen's squadron.

"If you will not come to me before you quit England for the West Indies," she wrote, "you will have put away from both of us for ever any prospect of our being aught but strangers. I have been a wicked, weak girl, perhaps, though never have I regarded myself as such until now, and I should have told you all that I had done on the night when you parted from me; then, at least, you would have forgiven me. Now, I ask you, I beseech you, to come to me at once on receipt of this; I implore you to do so on the strength of the love that has been between us, and in memory of the love of our early years. If you will do that, then--then--you shall know all. No action on my part shall be hidden from you."

"Will he come?" she said, "will he come?" And, thinking of the letter she had written, she told herself that he would do so. Surely he would!

Meanwhile, below, Mrs. Pottle was engaged in the homely occupation of sewing and of ironing, and of other feminine pursuits that are dear to the hearts of women of her class. Upon a huge table were spread out a number of garments such as would befit a young lady who was about to make a clandestine marriage--a marriage which, since it must necessarily be without the accompaniment of a large and fashionable gathering of friends, would be but simple, yet a ceremony in which the bride would, nevertheless, be expected to make a proper appearance. To wit, there was a flowered brocade covered with Italian posies, myrtles, jessamine sprigs, and pinks; as well as a lace apron and stomacher, more than one fan, and several articles of lingerie. And upon another table was an enormous hat such as Gainsborough loved to paint, and with which an earlier master, Rembrandt, frequently adorned the pictures of his cavaliers.

"Fit for any lady to go to the altar in," Mrs. Pottle muttered to herself as she fingered all these things. "Fit even for the Princess 'Melie. And worth money too--good money; that will be of use, come what come may. Worth money; ay! that's something; and I've 'ad fifty guineas from Bufton--damn him!--I'll get no more arter he's led his bride to church to-morrow."

Then she walked to a cupboard and, taking out a thick black bottle and a small glass, helped herself to a dram, old customs of her stormy seafaring life being strong upon her still; while, as she drank so she still continued to muse, sitting down near all this finery, and occasionally regarding it.

"P'r'aps, arter all," she murmured, "I done wrong; p'r'aps I oughter not to--to let 'er 'ave him. Yet 'er 'art's on it. 'I will go through with it,' she said last night--only last night 'though the devil stood a-tween him and me. You know from the time I come back from Tunbridge I was set upon it.' And so she 'ave been set upon it. Ah, well! he oughter to 'ave 'er. And now he must 'ave 'er. Well, so be it."

After which, her eye falling again upon the clothes laid out near her, she murmured, "Worth money; that's something."

The house in which she now sat below stairs, while Ariadne Thorne was upstairs in the parlour, was one that the gentry of the county of Hampshire were in the habit of using when in London, it being an instance of the numerous better class of lodgings which were to be obtained in the town at the end of the reign of George II. It also was near the House of Commons, and had been handy for General Thorne during the time he sat in that assembly. But now that Parliament was not sitting, and when Ariadne had come to London, ostensibly with a view to visiting the mercers and other furnishers of ladies' necessaries, there were no other occupants of the house but herself and those who had accompanied her.

Presently Mrs. Pottle roused herself from a nap to which she had succumbed--perhaps owing to the heat of the summer day!--and regarded a clock that ticked in the parlour which she used in common with other ladies' servants and gentlemen's gentlemen when the house had lodgers.

"Five o'clock," she muttered, "five o'clock, and the Portsmouth coach is doo in the city by now. If Sir Geoffrey's coming, he'll be here by this, or soon. His frigate ain't started on no voyage, I'll go bail; not with that wind a-blowing. Will he come? Will he? He see that villain, Bufton, sure enough in the avenue, and he heerd her say to me as 'ow he had seen him. Pity! Pity! Might 'a' spoilt all. Lawk's sakes, what will she tell him when he do see her?"

Again she dozed, sitting in her chair; then, when perhaps she had slumbered peacefully for some quarter of an hour, she sprang to her feet wide awake, for, above, she had heard a hackney coach rumble up to the door. And, a moment later, had also heard the rush of feet across the room, and knew, divined, with woman's instinct, that Ariadne had flown to the window to peer out from behind the heavy curtains and to observe if he for whom she was waiting had come.

In another instant, Mrs. Pottle was running up the narrow stairs from below to open the door in answer to an imperious summons that sounded through the house.

With almost a look of guilt, a half look of terror, on her face, she answered the question of Sir Geoffrey Barry as to whether her mistress was within; she seeing, as she glanced at him, that he was very pale--as pale as he who was so bronzed could be--and that on his face was a stern look.

"Your mistress," he said, "has sent for me. I am here in answer to her summons. Where is she?"

"She is 'ere, Sir Jaffray," Mrs. Pottle said, opening the door of the parlour and announcing him. And then those two who had loved each other so fondly and so long were alone face to face.

"How lovely she is!" Geoffrey thought, observing the sad, pale face of the girl and her soft eyes as they were fixed on him; observing, too, however, how one white hand was pressed to her heart as though to still the tumult beneath. "How lovely, and--how false."

"Geoffrey!" Ariadne cried now. "Oh, Geoffrey! you have come to me. I knew you would. Knew it so well. You could not stay away from me," she said, sinking her voice so that the gentle tones of it sounded even more sweet than usual, "when I wanted you to come. Oh, Geoffrey!" she sighed.

"Actress!" he said inwardly, his face white--almost, it seemed, drawn. "Actress!" Then cursed himself for being there--for, in solemn truth being drawn to her against his will! But aloud, he said, so coldly that the tone struck like ice to her heart:

"I am here because you desired to see me again; because, too, Heaven help me! you conjured me, lured me with those cunning words you wrote in your letter, 'the memory of the love of our early years.' Ay, our early love. You did well to speak of that. That, at least, has been."

"And can there be no other? Not when----"

"Not until," he cried, his voice ringing clearly through the room, "not until you deal truthfully with me, if ever; not until you answer my question fairly as to that man--that bedizened fop--I encountered in your avenue!"

"What do you ask? What do you desire to know?"

"That you know as well as I. Yet once again. I ask you, did that man come to Fanshawe Manor; was he there by--my God!--by appointment with the Manor's owner: was he there to see--Ariadne Thorne?"

For a moment the pure clear eyes gazed into his, then they dropped and sought the floor.

"Yes," she whispered slowly, hesitatingly, "yes, he went there--to see--Ariadne Thorne----"

"Ah!" he cried, "ah! I knew it. Knew it well from the moment I heard your whispered words to your woman. I knew it. Oh!" and now he, too, lifted his hand towards his heart as though to still it. "Oh! then thus all ends; thus I bid farewell to all our love. It is enough. To-morrow I resign my command----"

"No! no!" she cried, and now she came swiftly towards him. "No! no! To-morrow! Not to-morrow! Until to-morrow at least is past--do nothing. Geoffrey! Geoffrey! I love you; fondly, madly! Not to-morrow, of all days! not to-morrow!"

* * * * * * *

"A long talk," muttered Mrs. Pottle, below stairs, "a long talk," and she glanced at the clock, which now struck seven even as she did so. "A long talk. She must 'a' bin telling of 'im all. Ah! poor sweet, I'll go bail she finds it pretty 'ard to do. Yet they're quiet, too. I don't hear no walking about. Surely they ain't a-quarrelling--surely"--for now her melodramatic mind, a mind perhaps attuned to such things by her own stormy life, imagined the worst--"he hasn't refused to believe her! hasn't--oh! oh! that's too terrible to think on."

"I'll go up," she whispered to herself a moment later; "I will. I'll find an excuse for busting in upon them. I'm getting the 'orrors what with Sir Jaffray being 'ere and what with thinking of all that's to do to-morrow."

Whereon, slowly, she went towards the stairs, and began to creep up them noiselessly; but, when she reached where they turned towards the passage, she paused astonished.

For the door of the parlour opened, and Sir Geoffrey came forth--yet not alone.

By his side was Ariadne, her fair, lovely face radiant with a look of happiness extreme, her hand upon his sleeve. While, as they reached the hall door and she put up her other hand to unfasten the latch, Mrs. Pottle saw, with wonder-staring eyes, that he, bending forward now, took that hand and raised it to his lips, kissing it fervently.

Then, ere he went, Ariadne being still behind the half-open door, he did even more, for now he held his arms open before her and drew her into them, and kissed her long and tenderly, after which, murmuring "Adieu, sweetheart," loudly enough for Mrs. Pottle to hear, he went forth into the street.