Fortune's My Foe - John Bloundelle-Burton

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in the coach and calling her "deary" and "dear heart," and bidding her cheer up, because the General-"although he hadn't the luck to be an admiral" – was reported to be kind and good.

      "And," she would say more than once, "remember that, as the lawyer told you, you go to what is your inheritance. It will be all your'n, and you will rule over it like a young queen until some day you love one who will rule over you."

      Practically, that was what Ariadne did do after a few short months; she did rule over the house for her great-uncle, as, ere long, she was to do it for herself. General Thorne was now helpless with old age, and was glad to know that, already, the girl was in the home which must so soon be hers; that she was there to bring sunlight into the great vast house which, through the Fanshawes, had by intermarriage come into the possession of the Thornes.

      As Mrs. Pottle had said, she presided over it like a young queen, graciously and kindly, making herself beloved all around the place, yet not forgotten by those old sailors amongst whom her earliest days had been passed. She became its mistress from then until now, when this history opens, and when "Ariadne Thorne" was a toast in the county, while many gentlemen of various degrees aspired to win both her hand and her love. When, too, others aspired to win that hand, not so much because they desired to obtain her love so much as, in its stead, they desired the possession of Fanshawe Manor and the hundred thousand guineas which were reported to be her fortune.

      CHAPTER I

      THE LION AND THE JACKAL

      Seventeen years have passed since the child who was to bear the name of that ship of war, in which she was born, had come into the world-upon the very day and at almost the very hour when her father had left it. Seventeen years! – full of storm and strife and battles, of thrones in danger; of one throne-that of England-almost lost to its holder by the invasion of him to whom it by birth belonged. Years full of storm and strife and battle by land and sea; of Dettingen won and Fontenoy lost, of India coming nearer to our grasp and America imperceptibly receding from it. Years full, too, of changes in many ways, especially in our own land. Of growing alteration in that old mother speech of ours which had become welded, by time and mixture of race into the superb and sonorous diction of the English Bible and of Shakespeare, and which found its last exponent in the great Defoe, but was now sinking into a jargon in which gentlemen and ladies spoke in a mincing and affected manner that was but a poor substitute for the grammar which, if they had ever known it, they had now forgotten. Gentlemen and ladies who should have been scholars, but who did not know the difference between "was" and "were" nor "is" and "are," nor the proper pronunciation of the vowel "e."

      Changes, too, of clothes, of habits, customs, and morality. Scarlet and blue cloth taking the place of russet or peach-coloured satin; French dishes and kickshaws in the place of the honest beef and mutton which had made us "eat like wolves and fight like devils"; and with the dancing-master manners of Chesterfield and his imitators superseding the grace and dignity of earlier days. The rogue too was now a crafty, scheming knave who feared public opinion as much as he feared the Lord Chief Justice and his subordinates, and began at this time to think as much of his respectability as of his neck; whereby he was an infinitely less interesting vagabond than his predecessor, who revelled in his crimes, drank to the health of his friend, the gallows, and went drunk to Tyburn, damning and cursing the populace who cheered him, and jerring at the parson who sat in the cart by his side, had been.

      Two things, however, God be praised! were still left in existence in this England of ours, namely, masculine courage and feminine virtue; and against them neither the vagabond nor the knave had any more chance than they had ever had or ever will have. When they succeeded they did so because their victims were either fools or wantons, and when they failed, as often enough was the case, if they did not find the gallows they found the cart-tail, or what to them, if they belonged to the upper classes, was often quite as bad-contempt and ridicule.

* * * * * * *

      Seventeen years had passed, consequently the world had arrived at the year of our Lord 1758, and Beau Bufton sat in his lodgings in the Haymarket one June afternoon. In front of him, because he was a beau, there stood three wigs upon blocks, one black, the other brown, a third one golden, and upon each his eye glanced with considerable complacency-a complacency which, however, was somewhat marred by the recollection that none were paid for, and, as far as Algernon Bufton knew, were not likely to be so just yet. Which fact would not, perhaps, have been particularly painful to him except for one other, namely, that his credit was running short and his creditors were beginning to pester him. Nevertheless, he smiled approvingly upon them; not because they themselves were splendid, and would be costly-if he should ever pay his bills! – but because he considered that they would become him vastly.

      "It was the golden one I wore," he muttered to himself now, "when first I won her young and virgin heart at the Wells. Ay! the golden one. I do remember very well. I assumed it because it matched the blue frock and the green silk waistcoat trimmed with gold and the black breeches of velvet. Ah! well, I will wear it again."

      Then his eye, which was a dark, full one, fell upon a number of fans nailed against the wall, in the midst of which, spread out and open, was one that seemed to possess the place of honour. We know those fans because our grandmothers' grandmothers (when we had any!) left them behind after they had departed for a better world than this. We know the carved ivory sticks, the highly coloured landscape, the lover kneeling at his mistress's feet, with ever one amorous arm around her waist-as should be in such happy sylvan scenes! – also we know the blue sky and the sportive woolly sheep, as well as the bird upon the bough, the rivulet and waterfall. Thus the fan appeared on which Beau Bufton gazed now, his chin-a long one, causing him to be a man mistrusted of other men-in his hand. Yet more particularly he gazed upon two letters carved into the topmost ivory rib, and lacquered golden; two letters entwined together-the letters "A. T."

      "Ah, Ariadne!" he whispered, with emotion, "although you did protest, you let me take it. Ah, Ariadne! In faith you must be mine. Those sweet clear eyes, that supple form, those gentle features, and," he concluded, perhaps a little inconsequently, "the Fanshawe Manor and the hundred thousand guineas. All-all must be mine."

      Then he returned to his seat, with again the smirk of fervour on his face, while, still nursing that long chin, he pursued his meditations.

      It has been said that this chin made other men mistrust him. And, it may also be said, it was of so peculiar a shape as to make people dislike him. In truth, it was a blemish to what otherwise would have been a good-looking face-a long oval face, in which were set the soft dark eyes above mentioned. But this chin, running down to a point (so that some wondered how his barber shaved it, while others said it looked like a sheep's tail stuck on to an ordinary face), spoilt all. It caused him to look crafty; it seemed to make him lisp a little as he spoke, as though its weight was more than his lower jaw could bear; and it gained his enemies, since it irritated those who regarded it. It gave him, too, a cynical appearance, which was not obnoxious to him, as he considered that it emphasised the clever things which he flattered himself he was particularly smart at saying. For the rest, he was fairly tall, not badly knit, and as lean as a greyhound.

      Thinking of her whom he apostrophised as Ariadne, and of her sweet, clear eyes and supple form-with the Fanshawe Manor and the hundred thousand guineas not forgotten! – his thoughts lent themselves to other things in connection with her. To a letter he had addressed to her at Fanshawe Manor, this side of Portsmouth-one full of holy vows of admiration and esteem; a billet containing a little scrap of poetry (written for him, probably, by a garreteer of Grub Street for half-a-crown); one suggesting also that, by great good chance, he would be in the neighbourhood of Havant on a certain evening now close at hand, and that then "his wandering love-led steps" (for so he phrased it) would turn, as turns the needle to the pole, towards the avenue of limes where oft Phyllis was known to walk at eve and Philomel to warble. Perhaps, too, the gutter-poet had helped him in this charming composition!

      "Ay, so I wrote," he said to himself now. "And so I did. Well! well! Now for the means. I vow they run uncommon short." Whereupon he unlocked a 'scrutoire that stood close to him, and thrusting his hand into a drawer, pulling forth a silk purse. A well-filled one, too, as it seemed by its weight; one heavy enough for any beau to carry, provided always that it was so carried simply to supply the wants of the passing hour, and was

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