"Then pray make your arrangements. I say, Glynn, things look very shaky in Spain. There will be a tremendous fall in Spanish bonds."
"They will recover, if one can hold on. In fact, if a fellow can afford to wait, it would not be a bad plan to buy now," returned Glynn.
Here Deering's valet brought his master some brandy-and-soda, with a due amount of ice, a refreshment which both Verner and Glynn declined.
Travers Deering was tall, but not so tall as Glynn, more conventionally distinguished-looking, with regular aristocratic features, steel-grey eyes, and nut-brown hair and moustaches. He was, on the whole, a popular man, and bestowed a good deal of carefully veiled cultivation on his popularity. He was considered rather the type of a proud, manly, English country gentleman of a fairly clean life, though no saint, and a little martyrized by being tied to so cold and impenetrable a wife. Servants, and insignificant people of that description, whispered that the steel-grey eyes could flash with baleful fire, and that Lady Frances had grown colder and stiller since the deformity and delicacy of her only child had become perceptible and hopeless; while Mr. Deering never stayed at Denham alone with her.
Glynn was conscious of an unaccountable sense of relief when Deering expressed a desire to quit Paris, even sooner than he had at first intended.
It was absurd to imagine that any evil could arise out of a mere passing admiration; it could be nothing more, for a handsome stranger. Yet the expression of Deering's eyes, the uneasiness, wonder, fire, all commingled, which had so impressed him, flashed back vividly across his memory with undiminished disturbing force. But Deering was talking.
"I have been round Count de Latour's stables this morning. Have you seen them, Glynn? They are worth a visit. His stud-groom and head men are all English. I am very much inclined to back his chestnut, 'Bar-le-duc,' for the Derby. He's a splendid horse, only, of course, it isn't always blood or breeding that wins. There were a couple of Americans looking through the stables at the same time, who seemed deucedly wide awake, and inclined to back both 'Bar-le-duc' and a filly, 'Etoile d'Auvergne,' about which I am not so sure. I have met one of them, Vandervoort, in London, do you know him?"
Glynn said he thought he did. The talk became, for a few minutes, of the Turf—turfy. And while it went on the boy rose, and followed by his mother, who covered his retreat, noiselessly left the room. Glynn, looking at Deering at this moment, caught an expression of malignant dislike in his eyes towards his deformed son, or his wife, or both, which surprised and revolted him. It was instantaneous, and he continued to talk lightly and pleasantly, till Glynn rose to bid Lady Frances good-morning.
Verner left the room at the same time, and the two men walked towards the Place de la Concorde together.
"Pity that poor boy is a cripple," said Glynn, speaking out of his thoughts. "I fancy Deering is a good deal cut up about it."