"Then for your sake, I'll take the risque and have the post-chaise in the same place at three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. Promise you will come."
"No, no, I shall never be brave enough, and I must go for I hear voices, and I must never be seen with you again. Good-bye, good-bye," and before Vernon could stop her, Phyllida was running down the poplar alley to escape from Curtain Garden.
Our villain began to wonder whether she would elope after all. If she were shy, he might secure the necklace at any rate. With slow steps, his mind full of silken pearls, Mr. Vernon went slowly homewards. Half way down the High Street, he passed a narrow street known as Blood Passage from the vicinity of a large slaughter-house. He hesitated; made up his mind, and, turning down it, came to a crooked house over a low tumble-down doorway. He knocked fastidiously with the amber knob of his cane. A slatternly woman, whose last night's rouge was streaked with the matutinal ashes, opened the door.
"Does Mr. Maggs live here?"
"Come in," said the frowsy light o' love.
Chapter the Twenty-second
THE CURTAIN ROD
THE satirist stood in his publisher's back parlour, and, through the dusty glass of the partition, observed the Exquisite Mob purchase their castigation.
"'Tis strange," he pondered, "that mankind should be willing to pay four-and-sixpence to be laughed at. Yet it is!"
Mr. Lovely was awaiting a draught for one hundred guineas, and Mr. Paul Virgin, glad of anything that would delay for a while such an unwelcome disbursement, continued to bow and smirk over the counter as the neat little piles of new volumes speedily diminished. At last the hour for the midday meal arrived with a temporary lull in the storm of purchasers. Mr. Virgin turned with a sigh into his little back parlour and, wading carefully through the heaps of uncatalogued tomes, set out with a wry face to unlock his walnut writing-cabinet.
"We were hurried too much, Mr. Lovely, sir. We han't had leisure to bind the book as it should be bound. Ye would hurry us so, Mr. Lovely."