"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 a discomfort in his limbs and head.

"I must forget myself," he said. Nor was any grave mentor by, to assure
him that his tragic state was the issue of an evil digestion of his
dinner and wine. "I must forget myself. I'm under some doom. I see it
now. Nobody cares for me. I don't know what happiness is. I was born
under a bad star. My fate's written." Following his youthful wisdom,
this wounded hart dragged his slow limbs toward the halls of brandy and
song.