"Bah! Loving husbands. No! Who cares for loving husbands? None! none, you fool!" and now there came upon the man's face that hateful sneer which always made Granger's blood boil, and, as of old, a desire to strike him on those curling lips arose. "No, dolt! I am thinking of the screams of women wrenched from those whom they have snared into a noose, those whom they have tricked and hoodwinked. My friend, you are but a simpleton." "Oh!" exclaimed Granger coldly, with a well-assumed air of indifference, "oh! that's it, is it? It is only Anne--Bufton--you seek vengeance on?" "Only Anne! Only Anne Bufton, as you elect to term her. Who else, in God's name, should I seek to vent vengeance on--in such a way?" "I know not," Granger said, with an inimitable shrug of his shoulders, while at the same time he turned up the backs of his fingers and appeared to be regarding his nails with interest, "if you do not know yourself." "What do you mean? Speak. There is something in your mind. What is it?" "I thought," Granger replied, "that you sought revenge on Barry, too." "On Barry! What can I do with him? Damme! The Dutchman would not take him, the captain of a King's ship, would he? Even if we could get him there." "Perhaps he would, if he did not know who he was: if he were disguised and did not appear as a naval officer. Such things have been. Yet it was not of him I thought." "In Heaven's name, who then?" "I fear 'tis you, Algernon, who are the dolt, the idiot, not I; or perhaps your own marriage made you forget that he too has lately entered into the holy bonds. He, too, has a wife, on board the _Mignonne_." "My God!" Bufton exclaimed. "My God! You have thought of that! You--you whom but a moment ago I derided. Ay! ay! you are right, 'tis I who am the fool. Oh! what a vengeance. Oh! oh! On him, this haughty bully, this blustering sailor. But--oh no! no! no!" he cried, "it is impossible; it could never be. Get her out of an armed vessel and sell her into slavery in the colonies. It is impossible! Impossible!" "Doubtless it is impossible," Granger agreed. "'Tis true. It is not to be thought on. I am a fool. Yet," he continued, again speaking very slowly and incisively, "she will get herself out of it, out of the _Mignonne_, ere long. He sails in a day or so, and then she, Ariadne--the heiress whom you by rights should have had--comes ashore with Anne and her mother, the woman Pottle. They cannot go in his craft." "How do you know this?" "Partly from what Barry said to-day, after he had got men from me; partly from encountering his wife by Stepney Church a day or so ago. She speaks kindly of you now, Bufton; protests she thinks often of you--and--would pass her life by your side if you would have her." One must not write down the horrible exclamations that issued from Bufton's lips as he heard these words--the execrations on the woman who had entrapped and ruined him. Yet even when he was calmer, he continued wildly--