Mad Barbara by Warwick Deeping

Little Dr. Hemstruther, in his rusty clothes, came out from my Lady Purcell's house and entered the "chair" that was in waiting for him, telling the men to carry him to my Lord Gore's, in St. James's Street. He took snuff vigorously as the two chairmen swung along over the cobbles, patted his chest, and beat his hands together to keep them warm. His unwholesome face had a beaky, bird-like alertness, and he appeared cynically amused by something, for Dr. Hemstruther delighted in the quaint inconsistencies of human nature, and had a fanatical hatred of all altruism and the sentiment of religion. Like many sour old men, he was hugely pleased when he had discovered anything mean and scandalous. And yet he was to be trusted in the keeping of a secret, his cynical temper helping him to cover up the follies of those who filled his purse. He merely jeered and mocked at them in philosophic privacy, taking their money, and mocking his own self for being the creature of such hire.

The chairmen stopped before the house in St. James's Street, Dr. Hemstruther waiting in the chair till the house door opened, for a keen northwest wind was sweeping the street. Toddling in at last-a shrewd, meagre figure, his long nose poking forward between the curls of his huge wig-he was shown by the man Rogers into a little room at the back of the house where Stephen Gore kept his books and papers.