which he disliked, knowing that in that direction
there might be speedy ruin, and yet returning to it
from day to day in spite of his own conscience.
But there was yet another trouble which culminated
just at this time. One morning, not long after
that Sunday night which had been so wretchedly spent
at the Beargarden, he got into a cab in Piccadilly
and had himself taken to a certain address in Islington.
Here he knocked at a decent, modest door,—
at such a house as men live in with two or three hundred
a year,—and asked for Mrs Hurtle.
Yes;—Mrs Hurtle lodged there, and he was
shown into the drawing-room. There he stood by
the round table for a quarter of an hour turning over
the lodging-house books which lay there, and then...