lgernon bore vividly in mind that he did not approve of that
Sherry.

"I've heard of fellows frying sausages at home, and living on something
like two shillings a day," he remarked in meditation; and then it struck
him that Mrs. Lovell's parcel of returned jewels lay in one of
his drawers at home--that is, if the laundress had left the parcel
untouched.

In an agony of alarm, he called a cab, and drove hotly to the Temple.
Finding the packet safe, he put a couple of rings and the necklace with
the opal in his waistcoat pocket. The cabman must be paid, of course;
so a jewel must be pawned. Which shall it be? diamond or opal? Change a
dozen times and let it be the trinket in the right hand--the opal; let
it be the opal. How much would the opal fetch? The pawnbroker can best
inform us upon that point. So he drove to the pawnbroker; one whom he
knew. The pawnbroker offered him five-and-twenty pounds on the security
of the opal.

"What on earth is it that people think disgraceful in your entering a
pawnbroker's shop?" Algernon asked himself when, taking his ticket and
the five-and-twenty pounds, he repelled the stare of a man behind a
neighbouring partition.

"There are not many of that sort in the kingdom," he said to the
pawnbroker, who was loftily fondling the unlucky opal.

"Well--h'm; perhaps there's not;" the pawnbroker was ready to admit it,
now that the arrangement had been settled.

"I shan't be able to let you keep it long."

"As quick back as you like, sir."

Algernon noticed as he turned away that the man behind the partition,
who had more the look of a dapper young shopman than of a needy
petitioner for loans or securities, stretched over the counter to look
at the opal; and he certainly heard his name pronounced. It enraged
him; but policy counselled a quiet behaviour in this place, and no
quarrelling with his pawnbroker. Besides, his whole nature cried out for
dinner. He dined and had his wine; as good, he ventured to assert,
as any man could get for the money; for he knew the hotels with the
venerable cellars.

"I should have made a first-rate courier to a millionaire," he said,
with scornful candour, but without abusing the disposition of things
which had ordered his being a gentleman. Subsequently, from his having
sat so long over his wine without moving a leg, he indulged in the
belief that he had reflected profoundly; out of which depths he started,
very much like a man who has dozed, and felt