[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."