You may think that because I have admitted as much as I have admitted, that it has changed my feelings towards you. It has not. It never could. I am boiling over with passion at the present moment when I think how you treated our plot with contempt and walked out of it with the air of a conqueror. I am going to bury myself in Devonshire, partly because I have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, but partly so that I may not have the misfortune to see anything more of you. By the time we meet again, if ever we do, I hope that you will be cured.
Sybil Bultiwell.
Jacob read the letter twice, until every phrase and syllable seemed burned into his memory. Then he tore it into small pieces, gave Dauncey a power of attorney, and started for Monte Carlo. He lingered a little on the way there, exploring the country round Hyères and Costebelle. Almost the first person he met at Monte Carlo was Lord Felixstowe. He was coming out of Ciro’s bar, his shoulders a little hunched, a cigarette dropping from his lips. He would have passed Jacob, if the latter had not accosted him.
“Forgotten me, Lord Felixstowe?”
His young lordship recognised Jacob and cheered up.
“Oil in the wilderness, manna in the desert!” he exclaimed. “A man with a banking account! Come right in, and Henry shall mix you a morning tot that will make you feel as pink as the sunrise.”
“I’ll try this wonderful drink,” Jacob consented, “but I don’t need it. By the bye, were you to have had your share of that five thousand pounds?”
“Just one degree too thick that was for me,” the young man confided, after he had given mysterious orders to his white-linened friend behind the bar. “I am not putting on frills, mind. I was willing to come in on any scheme to induce you to part with a bit, but I didn’t fancy the medieval touch and the black gentleman. Gad, you’re a little terror, though, Pratt! I’d have given something to have seen you knock those two about! I went to visit Mason in hospital. You couldn’t see his face for bandages.”...
On Jacob’s proposition, they strolled out on to the terrace.