.

But Zachary Fay was not a man whom it was easy to turn hither and
thither. He was a stern, hard, just man, of whom it may probably be
said that if a world were altogether composed of such, the condition
of such a world would be much better than that of the world we
know;--for generosity is less efficacious towards permanent good than
justice, and tender speaking less enduring in its beneficial results
than truth. His enemies, for he had enemies, said of him that he
loved money. It was no doubt true; for he that does not love money
must be an idiot. He was certainly a man who liked to have what was
his own, who would have been irate with any one who had endeavoured
to rob him of his own, or had hindered him in his just endeavour
to increase his own. That which belonged to another he did not
covet,--unless it might be in the way of earning it. Things had
prospered with him, and he was--for his condition in life--a rich
man. But his worldly prosperity had not for a moment succeeded in
lessening the asperity of the blow which had fallen upon him. With
all his sternness he was essentially a loving man. To earn money
he would say--or perhaps more probably would only think--was the
necessity imposed upon man by the Fall of Adam; but to have something
warm at his heart, something that should be infinitely dearer to him
than himself and all his possessions,--that was what had been left
of Divine Essence in a man even after the Fall of Adam. Now the one
living thing left for him to love was his daughter Marion.

He was not a man whose wealth was of high order, or his employment of
great moment, or he would not probably have been living at Holloway
in Paradise Row. He was and had now been for many years senior clerk
to Messrs. Pogson and Littlebird, Commission Agents, at the top of
King's Court, Old Broad Street. By Messrs. Pogson and Littlebird he
was trusted with everything, and had become so amalgamated with the
firm as to have achieved in the City almost the credit of a merchant
himself. There were some who thought that Zachary Fay must surely be
a partner in the house, or he would not have been so well known or
so much respected among merchants themselves. But in truth he was
no more than senior clerk, with a salary amounting to four hundred
a year. Nor, though he was anxious about his money, would he have
dreamed of asking for any increase of his stipend. It was for Messrs.
Pogson and Littlebird to say what his services