"That she does not know, or swears she does not. But that they have met before, that he helped her to plan this scheme, I feel assured. Oh, Geoffrey, how can we put an end to further mischief?" "Pity 'tis that it was ever begun. And, though I say it not unkindly, that you ever countenanced it." "Nay, nay!" Ariadne cried, "misjudge me not; I never knew what was being done until the last moment. You must believe that, Geoffrey, or--or--there is no happiness in store for us. I never heard that they had met at Tunbridge, and that he was deceived into thinking she was Ariadne Thorne. I never knew, until a quarter of an hour before you came on that night, that he had been in the lime-tree avenue. And I should not have known it then but by an accident." "An accident?" "Yes. I was awaiting you as ever, was wondering why you were late, when I saw--it was easy enough to distinguish in the glow of the sunset--a scarlet coat in the avenue. And then--then--Anne came in hurriedly a little later, with her cloak and hood on." "The hood I saw lying there. The one I thought you had worn, and which made me doubly suspicious." "The same. She removed it from her head while talking to me, and, laying it down, forgot it. I asked her who the man could be who was wearing that scarlet coat, and then she told me all, or, at least, almost all. But, knowing you were coming, and wishing to tell her mother who was heart and soul in this scheme of vengeance, she left me and forgot that hood." "Thank Heaven!" Sir Geoffrey said, "that you knew so little; as well as that you had no part in the plot. Knave, vagabond as the fellow is, I should not have liked my Ariadne to have had part in hoodwinking him." And the girl seeing, understanding by his words, that he believed her, was happy. After this they were silent a little while, though each was thinking, in a different way, upon the same thing. He, of what a thousand pities it was that a brave girl such as Anne Pottle should have ruined her future to obtain revenge; she, of what the future might bring--a future that, she could scarcely have told why, she dreaded and looked forward to with extreme fear. "There are two persons," she whispered now, unconsciously drawing a little closer to her lover's arm even as she did so, "two persons whom, if he had the power to injure, he would. Geoffrey, you know those two?" "You and I, sweetheart, is't not so? Well, what can he do--this discredited, ruined rogue? What! We shall be man and wife soon now, since there is no truth in the report that I take my ship to join Boscawen; since, too, it seems likely that she and I are doomed to inaction. Ah! if Admiral Hawke could but bring the French to action nearer home and I might be with him. Then--then--there would be a bright future before me."