He had been thinking of paying Miss Maubray a visit, but he had not avowed, even to himself, how high his hopes had mounted; and here was, in Lady May's ominous manner and determined evasion, matter to disturb and even shock him. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the route he had originally designed, he strolled into the park, and under the shade of green boughs he walked, amid the twitter of birds and the prattle of children and nursery-maids, with despair at his heart, and a brain in chaos. As he sauntered, with downcast looks, under the trees, he came upon a humble Hebrew friend, Mr. Goldshed, a magnate in his own circle, but dwarfed into nothing beside the paragon of Mammon who walked on the grass, so unpretentiously, and with a face as anxious as that of the greengrocer who had just been supplicating the Jew for a renewal of his twenty-five pound bill. Mr. Goldshed came to a full stop a little way in advance of Mr. Longcluse, anxious to attract his attention. Mr. Longcluse did see him, as he sauntered on; and the fat old Jew, with the seedy velvet waistcoat, crossed with gold chains, and with an old-fashioned gold eye-glass dangling at his breast, first smiled engagingly, then looked reverential and solemn, and then smiled again with his great moist lips, and raised his hat. Longcluse gave him a sharp, short nod, and intended to pass him. "Will you shpare me one word, Mr. Lonclushe?" "Not to-day, Sir." "But I've been to your chambers, Sir, and to your houshe, Mr. Lonclushe." "You've wasted time--waste no more." "I do assure you, Shir, it'sh very urgent." "I don't care." "It'sh about that East Indian thing," and he lowered his voice as he concluded the sentence. "I don't care a pin, Sir." The amiable Mr. Goldshed hesitated; Mr. Longcluse passed him as if he had been a post. He turned, however, and walked a few steps by Mr. Longcluse's side. "And everything elshe is going sho vell; and it would look fishy, don't you think, to let thish thing go that way?" "Let them go--and go you with them. I wish the earth would swallow you all--scrip, bonds, children, and beldames." And if a stamp could have made the earth open at his bidding, it would have yawned wide enough at that instant. "If you follow me another step, by Heaven, I'll make it unpleasant to you." Mr. Longcluse looked so angry, that the Jew made him an unctuous bow, and remained fixed for a while to the earth, gazing after his patron with his hands in his pockets; and, with a gloomy countenance, he took forth a big cigar from his case, lighted a vesuvian, and began to smoke, still looking after Mr. Longcluse. That gentleman sauntered on, striking his stick now and then to the ground, or waving it over the grass in as many odd flourishes as a magician in a pantomime traces with his wand. If men are prone to teaze themselves with imaginations, they are equally disposed to comfort themselves with the same shadowy influences.