Later that night, if the worthy landlord could have but seen into the small, low-ceilinged room in which Beau Bufton was installed, he would perhaps have thought that his guest was a madman, or, had at least, partaken too freely of the contents of a silver flask by his side. For he laughed and chuckled to himself again and again; while also, he snapped his fingers more than once in a manner which seemed to testify exuberant delight. "To espouse Mistress Thorne," he repeated continually, as now he proceeded to divest himself of his clothes, knowing that it was necessary he should obtain some few hours' rest. "To espouse Mistress Thorne. Oh, gad! It is too much!" Yet, it would seem as though there was a sinister side to his humour as well, since occasionally, amidst all his hilarity, he would exclaim-- "Curse him! Curse him! He _is_ a gentleman, it would seem, and he outraged me not only by his jeers and derisions, but also by having got the better of me in the encounter. So be it! A fortnight hence, my friend, and I shall have had my full retaliation. Ah, Sir Geoffrey Barry, you do not know yet with whom you have to deal! 'One of the maids,' indeed!" CHAPTER IV. AN UNKNOWN VISITOR. "Ah! what a little Time to Love is lent, Yet half that time is in unkindness spent." As Sir Geoffrey proceeded up the avenue, at the end of which stood Fanshawe Manor--an ancient house that for years had belonged to a family bearing the same name as itself, and had then passed into the hands of that family's kinsmen, the Thornes--he looked ahead of him, expecting to see the light dress of Ariadne on the verandah; the spot where, whenever she knew he was coming from Portsmouth to visit her, she placed herself. But to-night, very much to his disappointment as well as to his astonishment--she was not there. This disconcerted him a little, since it was the first time that he had ever known her to be absent from that point of observation. The first time! and this on the evening when, of all other evenings, he had encountered that grimacing, pranked-up fop who had spoken as though, forsooth, he had some intimate knowledge of her and her doings. What did it mean? he asked himself in consequence. What? Was it possible that she, his modest, winsome Ariadne, in whose eyes truth shone, in whose every accent truth was proclaimed, could be--a--a coquette! Was it possible, too, that she, who knew that he was riding from Portsmouth on that very evening to pass an hour with her, had been whiling away the previous hour with that fellow--that creature whom he believed was what they called, in their London jargon, a macaroni--a swaggerer--a beau! If so--but no! He could never believe that!