For many years after her father's death Ariadne's home was with her mother at Gosport, and here she grew from childhood to womanhood, and became a sweet, pure girl, whom to see was at once to admire. A girl so fair and pretty, that, whenever she walked abroad, the eyes of men were turned towards her approvingly; a girl, tall, and with a figure that full womanhood would develop into one of extreme grace and beauty; one who possessed also such charms as deep hazel eyes, which looked out at you from between thick eyelashes that were many shades darker than the fair hair crowning her head as though with a golden diadem; a pretty girl whose masses of curls reminded one of the cornfields in July.
For years she lived with her mother here in Gosport, having done so from the time when Vernon sent them both home to England in the first ship of war that went back after Mrs. Thorne was able to travel. And of all the neighbourhood around she was the pet; she was, too, the darling of old sea captains who had had arms and legs lopped off in many a fierce fight against those whom we called our old "hereditary foes"; the darling of every old blue who had drawn cutlass for His Majesty King George II., or King George I., or even, amongst the very old and decrepit, for Great Anne; the beloved of those sea-dogs who had first spat their quids out on the enemy's decks and had then hewn that enemy down before them. For these old salts, no matter what their rank was, regarded her as their own child and property. Had she not been born amidst the roar and smoke of England's cannon as they vomited forth fire and fury? Was she not a sailor's child, and he one who had fallen as a sailor should fall, dying on his own deck, while doing his duty? That was enough to make them love the little thing who grew beneath their eyes towards beauteous womanhood; enough to make old lieutenants who had served sufficiently long to be admirals, and admirals--fortunate dogs!--who had not seen half the service of those old lieutenants, worship her; to make them wander up to her mother's house and smoke their pipes there, and talk to her about the father who had died the glorious death. It was sufficient, too, to set old tars carving out ornaments and knick-knacks from ancient ships of war which had been towed as prisoners into the harbour and there broken up, all of which they presented to her with grins of pleasure, and almost with blushes--if such could be!--upon their wind-tanned, scarred faces. It was amply sufficient also to cause others to bring her in baskets of strawberries and raspberries from their little gardens on the outskirts of the town, and bouquets of the sweet old-time flowers that grew in such profusion in those gardens. And some there were--and many--who called her the "Sailor's Pet," and others who named her the "Mariner's Joy."
Yet 'twas not only the old who loved Ariadne Thorne. Be very sure of that. For you cannot but suppose that the young men loved her too--those lieutenants and second lieutenants who, although still beardless, had fought in many of the numerous sea-fights of the period. Young fellows with boyish faces who had, all the same, been with Hawke at the Isle of Aix, and Howe at St. Malo, or had assisted in the destruction of the Oriflamme by the Monarque and the Monmouth. They all loved her, and she loved one, and one alone. Happy, happy man!
Two years before this narrative begins, however, and when Ariadne was sixteen, there fell upon her a great blow, that of her mother's death--a blow which, when it strikes a young girl in her swift blossoming from maidenhood to womanhood, is doubly cruel. Mrs. Thorne died of an internal disorder with which she had been for some time afflicted, and the girl was left alone, or almost alone, in the world. She had a relative, it was true, an uncle of her late father's, one General Thorne; but he was a very old man--so old, indeed, that he could talk of Eugene's campaign against the Turks, and speak of that great soldier as one whom he had seen in boyhood; while he was also able to boast that he had formed one of the guard of honour which had accompanied the present King, George II., now grown old, to his coronation. He dwelt at, and owned, an estate spoken of generally as "Fawnshawe Manor," which lay five miles or so on the London side of Portsmouth; one that would at his death come, with a very considerable fortune, to Ariadne herself. A fortune and an estate which would have come to her eventually through her father had he not been slain at Cartagena, even without his making that will which his chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Glew, had so impressed on him to do, although it was unnecessary; that must have come to her, since no heir male existed to deprive her of it, or to step in between her and it.
She had likewise a friend, a true and steadfast friend, one who loved her as, next to her mother, no other woman could have loved her. A hard, rugged woman was this friend, with a deep voice and corrugated face, yet possessing within her bosom a heart of gold; the woman who had assisted at her birth--Mrs. Pottle, now growing old.
"Ah!" this good creature would moan sometimes as she sat by her fireside, either in her own room in the house at Gosport, or, later, in her parlour at the lodge at Fanshawe Manor, which she came to occupy later. "Ah! if Ariannie," as she pronounced the loved one's name, "was not left to me, mine would be a weary lot. Pottle, he've gone; he done his duty, but he've gone; at Anson's victory off Finisterre, it were. And as to all my children--oh!" she would exclaim, "there! I can't abide to dwell on them. Oh! my children," whereon--because old customs grow on us and are hard to shake off--the brave sailor-woman would endeavour to console herself with something from a black bottle.
But she was true as steel to "her little child," as she called Ariadne; true and loving as her honest English heart, as any honest woman's heart, could be. She had not attended to all the child's wants since the black day off Cartagena in '41; had not nursed and attended to Ariadne for years, nor told her--in company with her own little ones--of fierce and turbulent sea-fights and land-fights, without becoming a foster-mother to her. So, now, she accompanied the girl, clad in her deep mourning and weeping sorrowfully for her loss, and also for having to quit the little house where she had lived so happily for the great one where she did not know whether she would be happy or not. She accompanied Ariadne, sitting by her side 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.