"Yes—yes: I will be!" he said to himself—speaking not with his lips, but with that silent though emphatic tongue which belongs to the soul. "My good star cannot have deserted me for ever! But this day must show!"
Then, calling all his assurance to his aid, he turned into the office of a well-known merchant and capitalist on Cornhill.
The clerks did not immediately recognise him; for the last time he had called there, it was at four in the afternoon and he had alighted from an elegant cab: whereas now it was half-past nine in the morning, and he had evidently come on foot. But when he demanded, in his usual authoritative tone, whether their master had arrived yet, they recollected him, and replied in the affirmative.
Greenwood accordingly walked into the merchant's private office.
"Ah! my dear sir," he said, extending his hand towards the merchant, "how do you find yourself? It is almost an age since we met."
The merchant affected not to perceive the out-stretched hand; nor did he return the bland smile with which Mr. Greenwood accosted him. But, just raising his eyes from the morning paper which lay before him, he said in a cold tone, "Oh! Mr. Greenwood, I believe? Pray, sir, what is your business?"
The ex-member for Rottenborough took a chair uninvited, and proceeded to observe in a confidential kind of whisper,—"The fact is, my dear sir, I have conceived a magnificent project for making a few thousands into as many millions, I may say; and as on former occasions you and I have done some little business together—and I have put a few good things in your way—I thought I would give you the refusal of my new design."
"I am really infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Greenwood——"
"Oh! I knew you would be, my dear sir!" interrupted the ex-member. "The risk is nothing—the gains certain and enormous. You and I can keep it all to ourselves; and——"
"You require me to advance the funds, I presume?" asked the merchant, eyeing his visitor askance.