This was the closest remark he made to his relations with Robert, who informed him that he was going to London on the following day.  Jonathan shook his hand heartily, without troubling himself about any inquiries.

“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.  The idea that they have got together, bit by bit, a power, travels slowly up to their heavy brains.  Once let it be grasped, however, and they clutch a god.  They feed on everybody’s hunger for it.  And, let us confess, they have in that a mighty feast.