"Sailed! With all those wretched trepanned creatures on board!" "With them all. And with one other besides, trepanned as he would have trepanned you and me had he had his will, and as he would have done to Lewis Granger, too." Whereon she told her foster-sister everything. CHAPTER XX. ARIADNE'S COMPASSION. That Sir Geoffrey Barry should be in a considerable state of exasperation when he returned with his boarding-party from their frustrated intention to capture the _Nederland_, and take from her as many able-bodied men as he required, was no more than natural. For now he scarcely knew where to turn to procure the extra men whom the Admiralty continued to strenuously instruct him to obtain, and he began to fear that the great fleet preparing to go to sea and attack Conflans would not owe much more to his endeavours. Yet, exasperated as he might be, astonishment obtained the mastery over that feeling when Ariadne--who had refused to go to bed till he came back--informed him of what had happened in the Marshes that night. "Great heavens!" he cried, in his first surprise, "this is too awful. What a vengeance! What a vengeance! And Anne in it, too. Yet," he continued, "she could scarcely have taken a more effective way of ridding herself of the man. The schooner will be captured beyond all doubt by Thurot, or Boisrose, or some of those French sailors, half corsairs and half naval officers. And then--well! then--at best it will be months, nay, perhaps years, of detention in a French fortress." "And at worst?" asked Ariadne. "At worst! Why--this," and he pointed downwards to the deck. "That, with perhaps a broadside into them." "I pity the others," said Ariadne; "him I cannot pity. Oh! he was willing to undertake such a fiendish scheme to smuggle Anne and me into that loathsome ship, and would have succeeded had not Mr. Granger, who hoodwinked him into believing that he would help him, found means to catch him in a trap instead." Whereon, in answer to Geoffrey's desire to be told all, his wife related everything that Anne had divulged on her return. Extreme as Geoffrey's anger was--and in that anger he felt almost inclined to go ashore and punish Granger in some way for having dared use his wife's name as a means whereby to lure Bufton to his doom--surprise once more took possession of him when he heard Ariadne say-- "Poor Mr. Granger! What a sad fate has been his. Oh! Geoffrey, why did not you tell me before that, Lady Glastonbury was--was----" "Tell you, child! Why, how could I tell you anything I did not know? 'Lady Glastonbury!' What was she to him that you speak thus?" "Sophy Jervis was my dearest friend once at Gosport, and--as you know--she married Lord Glastonbury." "Well! Ariadne." "And Sophy Jervis was loved by, and herself loved madly, Lewis Granger." "My God! And sacrificed herself to save him. Is that it?"