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...