"Throw herself overboard! Throw herself over---- Ah! Yes. Yes. I comprehend. Throw herself overboard!" And, laughing and chuckling, Bufton departed, though not without muttering once more, "Throw herself overboard."
And now, rejoicing over the dust he had cast in the man's eyes--while wondering, too, how he could ever himself have been tricked and ruined by so easy a knave and fool as Bufton was, Granger went on towards Blackwall steps, and, when there, stood listening for eight o'clock to sound from Stepney Church. Then, as he heard the hour strike, he walked swiftly towards a woman dressed in black who was approaching him.
"Well!" she exclaimed, coming close up to him and letting her veil fall away from her face. "Well? Does he take? Is the trap set?"
"Ay, with his own bait, Anne. See here," and he took a paper from his pocket and held it out to her; "'tis his own ratsbane with which he has set his own springe. And he paid a shilling for it."
The girl took the paper and read it beneath the light of an oil lamp shining hard by, while laughing a little in that soft, musical voice of hers as she did so; then she gave it back to him, whereon he tore the letter into shreds and, walking to the quay-side, dropped it into the water. "It was a shilling wasted," she said, as he came back to her.
"Nay, a shilling well spent. While deluding him with the idea that he has set a snare for you and Lady Barry, it induces him to walk into it himself."
"And," she asked, her bright, wicked-looking eyes glistening beneath the sickly rays of the lamp, "what is to do next? What will happen?"
"Terrible things. Amongst others, you will be so overwhelmed with your horrid fate that you will fling yourself overboard one dark night at sea. Lady Barry, too, will become the prey of a licentious Southern planter. Sir Geoffrey will perhaps go mad with despair. Is it not terrifying?"
"Nay, do not bite," she answered, while still she laughed softly. "But tell me what is to be done--with him?"
"He will await you in the Marshes with the Dutch skipper's men. Only--you will not come. Instead, Sir Geoffrey will do so. At least, I hope he will do so. And our good friend, who will learn that by some ill fate you cannot meet him, must be content with having Barry set upon and transported to the colonies."