Your humble, obedient Servant,
JASPER GAUNT.
"Jasper Gaunt!" exclaimed the Viscount. "Sixty thousand pounds! Poor Carnaby! Sixty thousand pounds payable on July sixteenth! Now the fifteenth, my dear Bev, is the day of the race, and if he should lose, it looks very much as though Carnaby would be ruined, Bev."
"Unless he marries 'the lovely heiress'!" added Barnabas.
"Hum!" said the Viscount, frowning. "I wish I'd never seen this cursed paper, Bev!" and as he spoke he crumpled it up and threw it into the great fireplace. "Where in the name of mischief did you get it?"
"It was in the corner yonder," answered Barnabas. "I also found this."
And he laid a handsomely embossed coat button on the table.
"It has been wrenched off you will notice."
"Yes," nodded the Viscount, "torn off! Do you think—"
"I think," said Barnabas, putting the button back into his pocket, "that Mistress Clemency's tears are accounted for—"
"By God, Beverley," said the Viscount, an ugly light in his eyes, "if I thought that—!" and the hand upon the table became a fist.
"I think that Mistress Clemency is a match for any man—or brute," said Barnabas, and drew his hand from his pocket.