Yet 'twas not only the old who loved _Ariadne_ Thorne. Be very sure of that. For you cannot but suppose that the young men loved her too--those lieutenants and second lieutenants who, although still beardless, had fought in many of the numerous sea-fights of the period. Young fellows with boyish faces who had, all the same, been with Hawke at the Isle of Aix, and Howe at St. Malo, or had assisted in the destruction of the _Oriflamme_ by the _Monarque_ and the _Monmouth_. They all loved her, and she loved one, and one alone. Happy, happy man! Two years before this narrative begins, however, and when _Ariadne_ was sixteen, there fell upon her a great blow, that of her mother's death--a blow which, when it strikes a young girl in her swift blossoming from maidenhood to womanhood, is doubly cruel. Mrs. Thorne died of an internal disorder with which she had been for some time afflicted, and the girl was left alone, or almost alone, in the world. She had a relative, it was true, an uncle of her late father's, one General Thorne; but he was a very old man--so old, indeed, that he could talk of Eugene's campaign against the Turks, and speak of that great soldier as one whom he had seen in boyhood; while he was also able to boast that he had formed one of the guard of honour which had accompanied the present King, George II., now grown old, to his coronation. He dwelt at, and owned, an estate spoken of generally as "Fawnshawe Manor," which lay five miles or so on the London side of Portsmouth; one that would at his death come, with a very considerable fortune, to _Ariadne_ herself. A fortune and an estate which would have come to her eventually through her father had he not been slain at Cartagena, even without his making that will which his chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Glew, had so impressed on him to do, although it was unnecessary; that must have come to her, since no heir male existed to deprive her of it, or to step in between her and it. She had likewise a friend, a true and steadfast friend, one who loved her as, next to her mother, no other woman could have loved her. A hard, rugged woman was this friend, with a deep voice and corrugated face, yet possessing within her bosom a heart of gold; the woman who had assisted at her birth--Mrs. Pottle, now growing old. "Ah!" this good creature would moan sometimes as she sat by her fireside, either in her own room in the house at Gosport, or, later, in her parlour at the lodge at Fanshawe Manor, which she came to occupy later. "Ah! if Ariannie," as she pronounced the loved one's name, "was not left to me, mine would be a weary lot. Pottle, he've gone; he done his duty, but he've gone; at Anson's victory off Finisterre, it were. And as to all my children--oh!" she would exclaim, "there! I can't abide to dwell on them. Oh! my children," whereon--because old customs grow on us and are hard to shake off--the brave sailor-woman would endeavour to console herself with something from a black bottle.