"Something worse that remains behind. For she laughs--she laughed but now when we returned here after that terrible scene, and when she was upstairs with me--laughs and says that, if she is truly tied to him by the laws, yet it will not be for long. She says, too, that the other man has not finished his business yet."
"What has this man, this Bufton, done to him, then? Surely he had no sister to be betrayed also. What can it be?"
"That she does not know, or swears she does not. But that they have met before, that he helped her to plan this scheme, I feel assured. Oh, Geoffrey, how can we put an end to further mischief?"
"Pity 'tis that it was ever begun. And, though I say it not unkindly, that you ever countenanced it."
"Nay, nay!" Ariadne cried, "misjudge me not; I never knew what was being done until the last moment. You must believe that, Geoffrey, or--or--there is no happiness in store for us. I never heard that they had met at Tunbridge, and that he was deceived into thinking she was Ariadne Thorne. I never knew, until a quarter of an hour before you came on that night, that he had been in the lime-tree avenue. And I should not have known it then but by an accident."
"An accident?"
"Yes. I was awaiting you as ever, was wondering why you were late, when I saw--it was easy enough to distinguish in the glow of the sunset--a scarlet coat in the avenue. And then--then--Anne came in hurriedly a little later, with her cloak and hood on."
"The hood I saw lying there. The one I thought you had worn, and which made me doubly suspicious."
"The same. She removed it from her head while talking to me, and, laying it down, forgot it. I asked her who the man could be who was wearing that scarlet coat, and then she told me all, or, at least, almost all. But, knowing you were coming, and wishing to tell her mother who was heart and soul in this scheme of vengeance, she left me and forgot that hood."
"Thank Heaven!" Sir Geoffrey said, "that you knew so little; as well as that you had no part in the plot. Knave, vagabond as the fellow is, I should not have liked my Ariadne to have had part in hoodwinking him."