He thought of Lord Verney's olive face, and looked and glared at the hair again as if he disbelieved his senses. Red! Were there two of them, a black and a ruddy? Stay; oh! women were sly devils! Lord Verney was a blind. This, this carrot Judas was the consoler! "There was a patch above the dimple at the corner of your lip. I dreamed I kissed it." Sir Jasper gave a sort of roar in his soul, which issued from his lips in a broken groan. The dimple and the patch! Ay, he had seen them! Only a few short hours ago he had thought to kiss that dimple with a husband's lordly pleasure, that dimple, set for another man!
"Blast them! blast them!" cried Sir Jasper and clenched his hands above his head. The world went round with him, and everything turned the colour of blood. The next instant he was cold again, chiding himself for his passion. He must be calm, calm, for his vengeance. This lock he must trace to its parent head, no later than to-night, if he had to scour the town. He sat down, stretched the fatal missive before him, and sat staring at it.
It was thus that a visitor, who was announced as Captain Spicer, presently found him. Captain Spicer was an elongated young gentleman, had a tendency to visual obliquity and was attired in the extreme of fashion. He minced forward, bowing and waving white hands with delicately crooked fingers.
His respects he presented to Sir Jasper. He had not up to this had the pleasure and honour of Sir Jasper's acquaintance, but was charmed of the opportunity—any opportunity which should afford him that pleasure and honour. Might he, might he? He extended a snuff-box, charmingly enamelled, and quivered it towards his host. Sir Jasper had risen stiffly, in his dull eye there was no response.
"You do not, then?" said Captain Spicer, himself extracting a pinch and inhaling it with superlative elegance and the very last turn of the wrist. "And right, my dear sir! A vicious habit. Yet positively," said he, and smiled engagingly, "without it, I vow, I could not exist from noon to midnight. But then it must be pure Macabaw. Anything short of pure Macabaw, fie, fie!"
Sir Jasper shook himself and interrupted with a snarl:
"To what, sir, do I owe the honour?"
"I come," said Captain Spicer, "of course you have guessed, from my Lord Verney. There was a trifle, I believe about—ha—the shape of his nether limbs. Upon so private a matter, sir, as his, ahem, nether limbs, a gentleman cannot brook reflection. You will comprehend that my Lord Verney felt hurt, Sir Jasper, hurt! I myself, familiar as I am with his lordship, have never ventured to hint to him even the name of a hosier, though I know a genius in that line, sir, a fellow who has a gift—a divine inspiration, I may say—in dealing with these intimate details! But Gad, sir, delicacy, delicacy!"
Sir Jasper, meanwhile, had lifted the letter from the table, and was advancing upon Captain Spicer, ponderingly looking from the lock of hair in his hand to that young gentleman's head, which, however, was powdered to such a nicety that it was quite impossible to tell the colour beneath.
"Sir," interrupted he at this juncture, "excuse me, but I should be glad to know if you wear your hair or a wig?"