The hope which he had so often expressed in his life-time, was fulfilled almost to the very letter;—for the old voluptuary had "died with his head pillowed on the naked—heaving bosom of beauty, and with a glass of sparkling champagne in his hand!"
CHAPTER CCLIII.
THE EX-MEMBER FOR ROTTENBOROUGH.
It was now the middle of April, 1843.
The morning was fine, and the streets were marked with the bustle of men of business, clerks, and others repairing to their respective offices, when Mr. George Montague Greenwood turned from Saint Paul's Churchyard into Cheapside.
He was attired in a plain, and even somewhat shabby manner: there was not a particle of jewellery about him; and a keen eye might have discovered, in the tout ensemble of his appearance, that his toilette had been arranged with every endeavour to produce as good an effect as possible.
Thus his neckcloth was tied with a precision seldom bestowed upon a faded piece of black silk: his shirt-cuffs were drawn down so as to place an interval of snowy white between the somewhat threadbare sleeve of the blue coat and the common grey glove of Berlin wool:—a black riband hung round his neck and was gathered at the ends in the right pocket of the soiled satin waistcoat, so as to leave the beholder in a state of uncertainty whether it were connected with a watch or only an eye-glass—or, indeed, with any thing at all;—and the Oxford-mixture trousers, rather white at the knees, were strapped tightly over a pair of well-blacked bluchers, a casual observer would certainly have taken for Wellingtons.
In his hand he carried a neat black cane; and his gait was characterised by much of the self-sufficiency which had marked it in better days. It was, however, far removed from a swagger: Greenwood was too much of a gentleman in his habits to fall into the slightest manifestation of vulgarity.
His beautiful black hair, curling and glossy, put to shame the brownish hue of the beaver hat which had evidently seen some service, and had lately been exposed to all the varieties of weather peculiar to this capricious climate. His face—eminently handsome, as we have before observed—was pale and rather thin; but there was a haughty assurance in the proud curl of the upper lip, and a fire in his large dark eyes, which showed that hope was not altogether a stranger to the breast of Mr. George Montague Greenwood.
It was about a quarter past nine in the morning when this gentleman entered the great thoroughfare of Cheapside.
Perhaps there is no street in all London which presents so many moral phases to the eyes of the acute beholder as this one, and at that hour; inasmuch as those eyes may single out, and almost read the pursuit of, every individual forming an item in the dense crowd that is then rolling onward to the vicinity of the Bank of England.