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Vellenaux - A Novel by Edmund William Forrest
page 205 of 234 (87%)
Coleman, with what might be realized by the sale of his commission, if
properly invested, would secure to him an income of not less than twelve
hundred a year, a very pretty sum for a man to have of his own for
pocket money, although his wife should happen to possess twenty thousand
a year. He determined to carry out this arrangement as soon as any
suitable opportunity for so doing came to his knowledge, but with the
exception of Draycott he told no one of the Begum's jewels, or his
intentions concerning their disposal.




CHAPTER XIX.


The happy, light Dragoon, in order to be near the lady of his love, had
taken up his quarters at Harold's Hotel, in Albermarle Street, a very
quiet, but aristocratic place, leading into Picadilly. Beyond the
Bartons and their family circle, he had few intimate friends, in fact,
except Draycott, the surgeon of his regiment, with whom he had been on
the most intimate terms for years in India, and to whom he revealed all
his joys and sorrows, there was not one male friend he cared a jot for
in London; of course the men of his club, and those he had met abroad,
who, like himself, were now home on leave, dropped in upon him
occasionally at his rooms; but his constant visitor and companion in his
peregrinations through the labyrinths of the great Babylon during the
height of a London season, was Draycott: he was young, clever, high
principled, thoroughly good natured, and of an old county family. He had
but once only paid a flying visit to the metropolis previous to joining
his regiment in India, and now having a few pounds to spare, was
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