The Monday morning brought neither of the expected letters to Lauriston.
But he had not spoken without reason when he said to Zillah that he had a
bit of property to fall back upon--now that he knew how ready money could
easily be raised. He had some pledgeable property in his trunk--and when
the remittances failed to arrive, he determined to avail himself of it.
Deep down in a corner of the trunk he had two valuable rings--all that his
mother had left him, with the exception of two hundred pounds, with which
he had ventured to London, and on which he had lived up to then. He got
the rings out towards the end of Monday afternoon, determining to take
them round to Daniel Multenius and raise sufficient funds on them to last
him for, at any rate, another month or two. He had little idea of the real
value of such articles, and he had reasons of his own for not showing the
rings to Melky Rubinstein; his notion was to wait until evening, when he
would go to the pawnshop at about the same time as on his previous visit,
in the hope of finding Zillah in charge again. After their meeting and
talk of the afternoon before, he felt that she would do business with him
in a sympathetic spirit--and if he could raise twenty pounds on the rings
he would be free of all monetary anxiety for many a long week to come.

It was half-past five o'clock of that Monday evening when Lauriston, for
the second time, turned into the narrow passage which led to the pawnshop
door. He had already looked carefully through the street window, in the
hope of seeing Zillah inside the front shop. But there was no Zillah to be
seen; the front shop was empty. Nor did Zillah confront him when he
stepped into the little boxed-in compartment in the pawnshop. There was a
curious silence in the place--broken only by the quiet, regular ticking of
a clock. That ticking grew oppressive during the minute or two that he
waited expecting somebody to step forward. He rapped on the counter at
last--gently at first, then more insistently. But nobody came. The clock--