quiries.

"There's so much of that old man in me," said Robert, when Percy praised
him, on their return, "that I daren't call him a Prince of an old
boy: and never a spot of rancour in his soul. Have a claim on him--and
there's your seat at his table: take and offend him--there's your seat
still. Eat and drink, but you don't get near his heart. I'll surprise
him some day. He fancies he's past surprises."

"Well," said Percy, "you're younger than I am, and may think the future
belongs to you."

Early next morning they parted. Robert was in town by noon. He lost no
time in hurrying to the Western suburb. As he neared the house where
he was to believe Dahlia to be residing, he saw a man pass through the
leafless black shrubs by the iron gate; and when he came to the gate
himself the man was at the door. The door opened and closed on this man.
It was Nicodemus Sedgett, or Robert's eyes did him traitorous service.
He knocked at the door violently, and had to knock a second and a third
time. Dahlia was denied to him. He was told that Mrs. Ayrton had lived
there, but had left, and her present address was unknown. He asked to
be allowed to speak a word to the man who had just entered the house.
No one had entered for the last two hours, was the reply. Robert had
an impulse to rush by the stolid little female liar, but Percy's recent
lesson to him acted as a restraint; though, had it been a brawny woman
or a lacquey in his path, he would certainly have followed his natural
counsel. He turned away, lingering outside till it was dusk and the
bruise on his head gave great throbs, and then he footed desolately
farther and farther from the house. To combat with evil in his own
country village had seemed a simple thing enough, but it appeared a
superhuman task in giant London.

CHAPTER XXV

It requires, happily, many years of an ordinary man's life to teach him
to believe in the exceeding variety and quantity of things money can
buy: yet, when ingenuous minds have fully comprehended the potent
character of the metal, they are likely enough to suppose that it will
buy everything: after which comes the groaning anxiety to possess it.

This stage of experience is a sublime development in the great souls of
misers. It is their awakening moment, and it is their first real sense
of a harvest being in their hands. They have begun under the influence
of the passion for hoarding, which is but a blind passion of the
finger-ends. Th