The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 172: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE GATHERING STORM 155 eance, and thus a terrible scene took place, of which all the servants were listeners. On going into the City on that oc- casion, Emmerson found that all persons who had any claims upon him there were getting very pressing for payment, and in the course of a few days they grew absolutely clamorous, acting and speaking as if they were secretly urged on by somebody who was giving them to understand that unless they became thus importunate it was very likely they would never be paid at all. Such was now the position of Emmerson’s affairs; and the reader will not therefore be surprised at finding him in such a nervous, excited, and agitated state as we have described at the opening of the present chapter. Indeed, it was quite clear that matters were coming to a crisis, and although for a few moments he had hugged the belief that “things were not so bad as they seemed,” the letters which he was now opening speedily convinced him that things could not possibly be worse. Some oi these letters insisted upon prompt settlement of accounts already delivered; others were from solicitors giving notice of actions in eases where many fruitless applications for payment had been made; other letters, again, contained refusals, some speciously apologetic, others laconically blunt, in answer to requests made by Emmerson for loans from former City friends; and other letters conveyed the intimation of the failure of speculations in which he had embarked, and the inability of three or four large debtors to pay him what they owed. These circumstances were of themselves sufficient to drive even a stronger-minded man than Emmerson to utter desperation. But still they did not constitute the whole sum of the crushing calamities and goading adversities that were hemming him in around. There was yet one other circumstance that cut him to the very soul, for the rumour of what was termed “ the faux pas in high life,” relative to the Countess of Curzon and Lord Sackville, had already reached the City, and thus made Emmerson aware that he had been duped and deluded by a fashionable courtesan who had wheedled large sums out of him under the semblance of affection, while she was all the time intriguing with her patriclan paramour. Bitterly, bitterly did Emmerson curse his folly, now that the infatuation had passed away; deeply, deeply did he CORNICIOOKS (CO)