"Now," he said, while on his face there came a good-humoured expression which made him look surprisingly handsome, though, indeed, there was little enough light left for the other to observe it by--"now be off. And, here, take your sword; it is a pretty weapon. Only, for the future, wear it for ornament--not use. Away with you."
"Curse you!" said the Beau, snarling at him. "I'll be at evens with you yet. If what I think is true, we shall meet again."
"Very likely," replied the other, "but it must not be here. I suspect you of having been courting one of the maids; next time go round to the offices--there you will not be interrupted," and in a moment he had walked swiftly away up the avenue.
Humiliated as the Beau was by his defeat at the hands of such a fellow! doubly humiliated, too, by that insulting suggestion that he, a gentleman, should have been lurking about after one of Ariadne's maid-servants, he had the good sense to hold his tongue and to let the victor--for such, in truth the other was--depart without further words. Yet, even after his defeat at that other's hands, he could still find some reflections to comfort him.
"Since," he said to himself, as now he went down the avenue on his road back to the inn, "the fellow is evidently on his way to visit her, he must be some local rustic who imagines that she favours him. Favours him! Oh, ye gods. Him! And not a quarter of an hour ere he came along she was promising to be mine--to be my wife--her head upon my shoulder--kissing me. Nay, I think she did not kiss me; in the hurry of our parting that sweet ceremony was forgotten. Ha! very well. When next he observes me, in this avenue, perhaps--it may be so!--he will see me riding up it as the owner, and the owner also of my Ariadne's guineas. Ah! my rural friend," he murmured, "I can forgive your insolence very easily."
Whereon, comforted by these reflections, he strode forward to the Hautbois, intent on obtaining some rest ere the coach should pass in the early morning.
His host and hostess were sitting outside the porch of the inn as he drew near it, the summer evening being so warm and balmy, while the old thatched house, over which the honeysuckle and woodbine twined, was close and stuffy inside; and as he now drew near both rose with the antique ceremony of such persons, and bowed and curtsied.
"Your worship has paid a visit to Mistress Thorne?" the man asked inquiringly, supposing that for no other purpose could a gentleman have come down from London by the coach, only to return by it the next morning.
"Yes, to Mistress Thorne," the Beau answered. "Yet, my friends," he said, "it is a visit which I wish not discussed. It was on business--a matter of business of some import. I pray you to keep silence on the matter."
"For," he continued to himself, "I would not have that country calf know that he has a rival in the field. Thus, when he learns that Ariadne is mine, his despair will be greater. Thus, too, I shall have my revenge."