The morning following the disastrous steeple-chase, Mr. Jasper Vermont
ordered his car, and then sat down to write to Adrien. He told him that
he regretted having to leave the Castle so suddenly, but urgent business
required his presence in London, and that he would return to Barminster
as soon as possible.
On the appearance of the motor, he took his departure, travelling direct
to Jermyn Court, where he stayed to lunch, waited on by the attentive
Norgate as though he had been Adrien himself. Then, having filled his
cigar-case with his friend's choicest Cabanas, he strolled through the
fashionable parts of the Park.
The loungers and idle men of fashion who usually frequented it at that
time of the day knew him well, and nodded with forced smiles of
friendship--it was clearly to their interest to be on good, if possible,
cordial terms with a man who always had the entree to the innermost
circles, and who had won the confidence of a popular favourite like
Adrien Leroy.
Those who had not been personally introduced to Jasper, had still heard
reports of his position, and looked after him with that half-envious air
which says so plainly: "There goes the kind of prosperous, wealthy man I myself should like to
be."
Mr. Vermont strolled along, his face wreathed in a perpetual smirk of
recognition, his hat off half a dozen times a minute, acknowledging the
smiling glances accorded to him.
When he had nearly come to Hyde Park Gate, he was confronted by one of
the loungers--an old acquaintance of his--whose woe-begone countenance
seemed expressive of acute mental distress.
Jasper Vermont recognised him in spite of his altered
appearance--usually a very gay one--and stopped him.
"What, Beau!" he exclaimed with seemingly effusive warmth; "you here;
whatever have you been doing--committing murder? Or have you married in
haste, to repent of it at leisure?"
"Neither, my dear boy," answered the well-groomed young man--a captain
in the "Household" Guards--one of the fastest and most generally liked
fellows in town. "Neither, Vermont; but I have just come from the City."
"City of the Tombs!" drawled Jasper facetiously.
Captain Beaumont laughed, but rather mournfully.
"Yes," he said, "all my hopes are buried in that beastly place.' Really,
the County Council ought to put a notice over the west side of Temple
Bar monument instead of that heraldic beast: 'Abandon hope, all ye who
enter here,'"
Mr. Vermont laughed, in his usual quiet way.
"How's that? The City is good enough in its way. What have they been
doing to you; won't they lend you any more money?"