"What's that?" he cried, after he had greeted Lady Merivale. "Was that Leroy declaiming against the world? It's for those in his position to bewail its vanities, while poor dev--I beg your pardon, Lady Merivale--poor men like myself can only cry for them."
Adrien smiled.
"Quite right, Jasper. I'm wrong, as usual.
"Mr. Vermont," said Lord Merivale, "you remind me of the clown in the beloved pantomime of my youth."
"An innocent memory that, at least, my lord," returned Vermont, who never stayed his tongue in the matter of a repartee for lord or commoner. "May I ask why?"
"You always enter the room with a joke or an epigram," was the answer.
Mr. Vermont smiled.
"'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players,'" he quoted lightly, as he turned his attention to the unfortunate "Portrait of a gentleman." "Ah, what have we here--another picture? An old master, I presume?"
The artists looked pleased; it would seem as if even the great connoisseur himself was liable to make mistakes.
"It is ugly enough, in all conscience," he continued bluntly. "For my part, I am an utter philistine, and like my art to be the same as my furniture--new, pretty to look at, and comfortable, and, for the life of me, I can't fall in love with a snub-nosed Catherine de Medici, or a muscular apostle. What is this?" He bent down to read the title. "Ah! 'Portrait of a gentleman of the sixteenth century.' Very valuable, I daresay, Lady Merivale?"