"Greenwood!" cried the second, stepping back in surprise.
The ex-member for Rottenborough raised his eyes at the sounds of those well-known voices, and beheld Mr. Chichester, with his inseparable friend the baronet, both eyeing him in the most insulting manner.
"Ah! Greenwood, my dear fellow," exclaimed Sir Rupert; "I am really quite delighted to see you. How get on the free and independent electors of Rottenborough? Egad, though—you are not quite the pink of fashion that you used to be—when you did me the honour of making my wife your mistress."
"Greenwood and Berlin-wool gloves—impossible!" cried Chichester. "Such a companionship is quite unnatural!"
"And an old coat brushed up to look like a new one," added the baronet, laughing heartily.
"And bluchers——"
Greenwood stayed to hear no more: he broke from the hold which the two friends had laid upon him, and darted down an alley into Coleman Street.
CHAPTER CCLIV.
FURTHER MISFORTUNES.
Greenwood had been insulted by those wealthy citizens who once considered themselves honoured by his notice; and this he might have borne, because he was man of the world enough to know that poverty is a crime in the eyes of plodding, money-making persons.
But to be made the jest of a couple of despicable adventurers—to be jeered at by two knaves for whom he entertained the most sovereign contempt, because their rascalities had been conducted on a scale of mean swindling rather than in the colourable guise of financial enterprise,—to be laughed at and mocked by such men as those, because they happened to have good clothes upon their backs,—Oh! this was a crushing—an intolerable insult!