The unhappy Greenwood felt it most keenly: he writhed beneath the sharp lash of that bitter sarcasm which had been hurled against his shabby appearance;—he groaned under the scourge of those contemptuous scoffs!
Sanguine as his disposition naturally was,—confident as he ever felt in his own talents for intrigue and scheming,—he was now suddenly cast down; and hope fled from his soul.
Not for worlds would he have risked the chance of receiving farther insult that day, by calling at the counting-house of another capitalist!
And now he fled from the City with a species of loathing,—as much depressed by disappointment as he had been elated by hope when he entered it a few hours previously.
He crossed Blackfriars' Bridge, turned into Holland Street, and thence entered John Street, where he knocked timidly at the door of a house of very mean appearance.
A stout, vulgar-looking woman, with carrotty hair, tangled as a mat, overshadowing a red and bloated face, thrust her head out of the window on the first floor.
"Well?" she cried, in an impertinent tone.
"Will you have the kindness to let me in, Mrs. Brown?" said Greenwood, calling to his aid all that blandness of manner which had once served him us a powerful auxiliary in his days of extensive intrigue.
"That depends," was the abrupt reply. "Have you brought any money with you?"
"Mrs. Brown, I cannot explain myself in the street," said the unhappy man, who saw that a storm was impending. "Please to let me in—and——"