On the night of that fateful trip, when Leroy returned to his chambers,
he found Lady Constance's letter. Already tired with the events of the
day, and the struggle in the water, this proved an overwhelming blow.
The thought that he had spent the day in idle dalliance, when he might
have been with the woman he truly loved--might have basked in the warmth
of her presence, even though she would never be his, drove him almost to
madness.

Jasper Vermont, who had followed him back to town by the first train
obtainable, called in at Jermyn Court, and found him pacing up and down
the room, more troubled and unhappy than he had ever been in the whole
course of his pampered, shielded life. Vermont listened and sympathised,
and stabbed afresh, with his artful accounts of Lady Constance's anger
at the fancied slight. He was altogether delighted at the way in which
things had turned out, though he did not know how Fortune had aided him
still more at Waterloo Station.

On the following morning Leroy received a cypher note from Lady
Merivale, saying that she had arrived home safely, and unnoticed; and,
with a sigh of relief, he turned his attention to his own affairs. To
Jasper's supreme annoyance, he insisted on going through a pile of
papers which Vermont had only meant him to sign; and to that gentleman's
chagrin he actually dared to interfere in the matter of rents and
leases; which proceeding, naturally, did not tend to make Jasper feel
the more kindly disposed to the world in general, and Adrien Leroy in
particular.