Then she slid her hand coyly into his, and told him it should be as he desired. "Now," she whispered, "you must away. Sunday sen'-night we leave for Cowley Street in Lambeth. You will not, Algernon, desire a great wedding? Let it be private; with none there but Mrs. Pottle, my faithful nurse. Say that it shall be so, my own." "It shall be ever as you wish, sweet one," Beau Bufton answered, while as he did so he laughed in his sleeve. Mrs. Pottle, her faithful nurse! The woman who had done more to bring this about in accord with his jackal's, with Lewis Granger's machinations, than any one else; the woman who was to have five hundred guineas for so bringing it about (unless he could in any way manage to avoid the payment of the money); the woman, who, that very night, had had ten guineas from him. "Yes, yes," he whispered, "Mrs. Pottle, your faithful nurse, on your side; Lewis Granger, my hireling, on mine." While as he mentioned the latter's name he reflected that here was another who would have to be hoodwinked out of the guerdon he had stipulated for--hoodwinked out of five thousand guineas. Verily! a vast number of those guineas would drunken, ruined Lewis Granger get, when once Ariadne's fortune was in his hands. A vast number! "Farewell, then," the girl said now. "Farewell, my beloved. Oh! do not deceive me, do not take advantage of my innocence and inexperience. Say you will not." "Dear heart," he murmured, "who could deceive thee?" "A girl," he added to himself, "who has a hundred thousand guineas and a Hampshire manor. Who could do so?" They parted now, she clinging to him tenderly before going away, and whispering in his ear that 99, Cowley Street, Lambeth, was where she would be a week from Sunday next, and that then she would be all his, and, meanwhile, would write often. They parted, she going up the avenue towards where the house stood, and he standing looking after her, feeling his chin and, with a contemptuous smile, drawing down the corners of his mouth. CHAPTER III. "A COUNTRY CLOD." It was now almost dark--yet not quite so, it being the period when the days are longest--and for some little time the Beau stood gazing after the retreating figure of his captured heiress. Then he turned slowly and began to retrace his steps to the Hautbois, where he intended to snatch a few hours' rest ere the up coach, which left the "Globe" at Portsmouth at five o'clock in the morning, should pass. Perhaps never had Algernon Bufton been in a more agreeable frame of mind than he was at this present time. Everything was, he told himself, very well with him. A ruined spendthrift; a man who, seven years ago, had inherited a substantial fortune and, in the passage of those seven years, had managed to squander it; the chance had come to him of winning this girl, whom, in his mind, he considered to be little better than a fool.