Markham replied in the affirmative.
"In that case I will procure passports for yourself and attendant, to-morrow morning," observed the young officer. "But, for the present, we all three stand in need of rest."
CHAPTER CLXXVI.
THE CLUB-HOUSE.
We must now transport our readers back to London.
At about the same time when the events of the two preceding chapters occurred in Castelcicala, others of a scarcely less interesting nature took place in the great metropolis of England.
It was about three o'clock in the afternoon of one of those dark, misty, dispiriting November days, when the sun is scarcely visible, and sinks early to rest, that half-a-dozen fashionable gentlemen were lounging in the bay-window of a Club-House in St. James's Street.
They were all dressed in the first style: gold chains festooned over waistcoats of the most recent Parisian fashion; and brilliantly polished boots, without a speck of mud upon them, showed that their owners had not arrived at the Club on foot.
"What news in the political world, Greenwood?" asked the Marquis of Holmesford.
"Nothing particular," answered the gentleman appealed to. "Our party is sure to drive the Whigs out next year; and then I shall show the independent and enlightened freemen of Rottenborough that they will acquire some honour through the medium of their representative."
"I suppose you will do a little good for yourself—eh, Greenwood?" asked the Honourable Augustus Smicksmack—a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, and just turned nineteen: "a baronetcy—eh, Greenwood? for that's the rumour, I believe?"