SCENE X
Lord Markham was a person of indefinite appearance, indefinite age and indefinite manners. He wore an ill-fitting wig, but he had a high reputation as a man of honour. He sat beside Sir Jasper on the front seat, while on the back sat Tom Stafford; and the curricle sped cheerily along through the up-and-down Bath streets out into the country budding with green, down, down the hill, to Hammer's Fields by the winding Avon. Sir Jasper's face bespoke great dissatisfaction with life at large, and with his own existence in particular. Tom Stafford was beginning to feel slightly bored.
"'Tis an early spring," said Lord Markham, in the well-meant endeavour to beguile away the heavy minutes and distract his principal's mind. "'Tis very mild weather for the time of year; and the lambs are forward."
"Ugh!" said Sir Jasper.
"Speak not to him of lambs," whispered Stafford; "do not you see he is all for blood and thunder?"
Then he added maliciously; "There is but one animal in the whole fauna that Sir Jasper takes an interest in at present; and that's not easy, it seems, to find in these purlieus, though we know it does haunt them: 'tis the red dear!" He chuckled, vastly delighted with the conceit.
"Let us hope we shall not have rain," said Lord Markham; "these clouds are menacing."
"Nay, they will hold up for half-an-hour. Enough to serve our purpose," growled Sir Jasper, and tipped the horses with the lash so that they spurned the slope.
"But we shall get wet returning," pleaded the well-meaning Earl, "I said so all along; 'twould have been better to have gone in a coach."
"I vow," cried Sir Jasper with a sudden burst of spleen, "I vow that I have it in my heart to wish that Villiers' ball may speed so well that I may feel neither rain nor shine, coming home again. Home again," said he with a withering smile; "blast it, a pretty home mine is!"