"Ha!" he said, glancing at her and noticing that, though plainly but comfortably dressed, she had a strangely worn and seamed face, such as those who have led an existence much exposed to the elements often possess. "Ha! It should be the good woman Mr. Granger told me of. Mrs.--Mrs.----?" "Pottle, your worship's honour. Miss Ariadne's nurse from the first." "Ay, Mrs. Pottle. Well, you would speak with me? You have some news?" "If it pleases your honour. Will your honour step this way?" It was indeed Mrs. Pottle, one of those women who in past days had assisted at Ariadne's birth. Yet with now but little of the comeliness left for which she had once been distinguished, the rumbullion, or its substitutes in England, usquebaugh and gin, having done their work. Time also had made her grey, and in some places bald. Otherwise, she was not much changed. As for her whilom companion in the _Ariadne_, she was gone. She lay now within the common grave at Gibraltar. "I shall see her to-night?" Beau Bufton asked, somewhat impatiently--eagerly--as he stepped into a side room after her. "She will be there?" "In truth she will, the pretty thing," the woman answered, roving an eye, and that a somewhat watery one, on him, "in very truth. At eight, in the lime-tree avenue. Your worship can find it?" "Doubtless. I may therefore rely on seeing her?" "It is to tell you so that I'm here. Oh! sir, you will be good to her. She loves you fondly." "Tush! What do I seek her for except to be kind?" Then he said, "Will she consent, think you, to what I desire--to--to--a speedy marriage?" "She loves you," Mrs. Pottle replied, with a gleam in her eye, "while, as for the marriage--well! young, tender though she is, and full of a maiden's fears, she longs for it." "She shall be gratified," Beau Bufton said, smirking and pulling at his chin so that Mrs. Pottle stared at him, wondering in her own mind if he were trying to pull it off. "I do avow she shall as soon as may be. I will go seek your parson here----" "Not here," Mrs. Pottle said, laying on his arm a finger, which he noticed had lost the top joint--it had, in truth, been shot off by a spent bullet in an attack made by the _Ariadne_ and _Kingston_ on five Spanish galleys, the shot coming through the scuttle of a cabin in which she was calmly cooking--"not here. You must do that in London town. She is a maiden averse to talk and gossip. She would not suffer----" "I will do it wher'er she pleases, so that she is mine. Now go, good woman, and tell her I shall be there. I must make a meal first and also remove the dust from off my clothes. Go now." "There was a promise," Mrs. Pottle said, with an appearance of hesitation, of modesty, which sat strangely on her rough face. "The gentleman, your friend, he gave a promise of reward----"