"Much. You know, sweetheart, that I have gotten a ship. No great affair at present--a small frigate, a capture; yet the time is coming. France itches for another great defeat; she is never satisfied! Soon it will come, And then, my Ariadne---- Ah!" he said, breaking off, "ah! I see you have already been taking the air to-night," and he directed her eyes to a dark hood lying on a table close by. "Did you get your dress torn in the bushes of the park?"
"No," she said. "No. I have not been out since the afternoon. But if I go with you partway down the avenue, the hood will be necessary. The dews are heavy sometimes on these summer nights," and she lifted her soft eyes to his.
"You have had a visitor," he said, as now he took a place by her side on a vast couch in the saloon. "A person----"
"I have had no visitor here to-day, Geoffrey," she said, interrupting him. "Why should you suppose that?"
"No one to see you?"
"No one. Why do you ask?" And there came now a blush upon her face, a deeper colour than before.
"I met," he said, "a man who, without doubt, hinted that he had been to see you."
"It is impossible!" she exclaimed.
"Impossible, perhaps, that he saw you. Undoubtedly possible, however, that I saw him--and--and--conversed with him. A gallant spark, too, if rich clothes and gauds make a man such. A gentleman figged out in London fashion, scarlet coat, yellow peruke, and such things. One who might be a rich man, if, too, such things mean wealth."
"Geoffrey!" the girl cried, and now he saw that she had turned very white. "I cannot understand. And--and--you conversed with him. What, then, did he say?"