"Ah, no, but you would have told me at first if anything had been wrong
with him."
Leroy smiled. He knew that to be true.
"He will win, you think?" she asked anxiously.
"Oh, yes!" was the careless reply. "Vermont says there is nothing to
touch him."
The countess raised her eyebrows.
"You trust this Vermont with a great deal, Adrien. Your horses, your
wine, and your legal business. He must be a wonderful man."
"Yes," he answered confidently. "Jasper's a treasure. Nothing comes
amiss to him. I should be in my grave if I had to face half the worries
he wrestles with daily. Come," he added, as the first bars of the new
waltz floated from the gallery; and with a sigh of enjoyment she rose
for the promised dance.
"No one's step suits me like yours," she breathed, when they paused for
rest. "Adrien, shall I back 'King Cole' for another two hundred?"
The two sentences were, perhaps, rather incongruous, but curiously
characteristic of her ladyship; for, in addition to a natural love of
intrigue, she had a partiality for betting on the turf and speculation
on 'Change--both, of course, sub rosa.
"Oh, yes," he said, as they started again. "Jasper has put two thousand
more of mine on to-day. There he is," he broke off, as the sleek,
carefully dressed figure of Mr. Vermont entered the ball-room.
"Talk of angels," murmured Lady Merivale, but with a glance implying
that she meant a being very far removed from that celestial grade.
Jasper Vermont did not excel at dancing; yet, strange to say, he was
invariably invited to every big function of the season. Indeed, the
hostesses of Mayfair would almost as soon have omitted the name of
Adrien Leroy himself as that of his friend.
It was difficult to explain this other than on account of his engaging
amiability. Probably Vermont would have transformed the famous advice of
Uriah Heep to "Always be obliging." Certainly, no pleasanter company
could be found, whether for man or woman; whatever the hour, however
mixed the company, Jasper Vermont had always a smile, a jest, or a new
and piquant scandal. In the smoking-room he would rival Mortimer Shelton
in apparently good-natured cynicism. In a duchess's boudoir he would
enliven the afternoon tea hour with the neatest of epigrams and the
spiciest slander of her Grace's dearest friend. Nothing came amiss to
him; as Adrien Leroy had once said, he was "a walking encyclopædia."