A girl came towards him from beneath the trees, shyly, almost hesitatingly; while over her fair hair she had drawn a riding-hood. And a moment later Beau Bufton had taken her hand and was impressing kisses on it, and muttering phrases such as were in use in the highest London circles, and, consequently, must be irresistible to this provincial heiress. "I am enraptured," he murmured now, "that one so fair should deign to receive her admirer. Ah, madam, if you but knew how my thoughts have dwelt on you since you let me claim you at the Wells----" "And stole my fan, bad man. Ah, sir, you should not have trifled thus----" "Love, madam, knows no law. But--but--fair Ariadne--almost had I said fair and chaste Diana--may I not gaze once more in rapture on those lovely orbs, those features ever present in my memory? Will you not remove your hood?" With no more than a brief assumption of coyness, the fair one did as her gallant desired, showing a mass of light hair beneath the hood, and, beneath that, a pair of bright eyes which glistened in the evening dusk. She had too a fresh red-and-white complexion, the whole being a very satisfactory proof of the benefits of country air and living, as opposed to the effects of what an earlier poet had rapturously spoken of as "the stench of the London flambeaux." "Ah! I protest," Beau Bufton exclaimed now as the maiden yielded to his request, and displayed her loveliness, "once more I tremble at the sight of those charms which won my heart at Tunbridge. Ariadne, you know by my letters all that I desire--all I wish. To call you mine. To be your husband. You cannot doubt my love." "So soon?" she said. "Oh, fie! Not yet--not for years, I vow. I am too young." "Young! Is the heart ever too young for love? And, Ariadne, dearest one, now is the time. I protest I cannot wait." "But there are my guardians, the lawyers. What will they say?" "What can they say? I am of ancient family, sweet one, and allied to some of the most distinguished houses in the land. They can make no dissent." "If 'tis to be done," the girl said, "it must not be here. Oh! I could not. Instead, in London. We go to London two weeks hence. Yet--yet--I fear," and she gazed up into his face with a look of alarm that fascinated him. For now he knew that the hundred thousand guineas were almost in his grasp. Yet as those clear eyes met his, they also disturbed him. "Where," he muttered, "where, dearest, have I seen such orbs as yours before? Or was't in my dreams of them? Those lovely orbs." "I do not know," she answered. "How can I say? I have wandered little away from this old country home of mine; and at Tunbridge was the first time I have ever been in the gay world. Ah, Algernon, you will be good to me?" "Your life shall ever be my choicest care. My most precious treasure. Dearest, may I not put up the banns to-morrow, when I return to London?" "You will love me always?" "Always and ever."