A stranger passing him that afternoon would have said-- "There sits a man who hates all the world." We, who know him better, would have said-- "There sits our poor dog with a bad name, deserted even by hope." And so it was.
Jeffreys had left Clarges Street smarting under a sense of injury, but still resolved to keep up the fight for his good name, in which for so many months past he had been engaged.
Not by appealing to Mr Rimbolt.

Although he knew, had Mr Rimbolt been at home, all this would not have happened, his pride forbade him now to take a single step to reinstate himself in a house from which he had been so ignominiously expelled.

No, not even when that house held within its walls Percy and Raby.

The idea of going back filled him with horror.
On the contrary, he would hide himself from them, even though they sought to find him; and not till his name was as good as theirs would he see them again or come near them.
Which surely was another way of resolving never to see them again; for the leopard cannot change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin! A bad name is a stain which no washing can efface; it clings wherever you go, and often men who see it see nothing else in you but the scar.
So thought poor Jeffreys as he slowly turned his back on all that was dear to him in life, and went out into the night of the unsympathetic city.
At first, as I said, he tried to hold up his head.

He inquired in one or two quarters for work.