In the selection of his place of business, he of course exercised more care, but here, too, luck favoured him.  A Russian merchant moving into more spacious quarters ceded to him a small office in Fenchurch Street, with furniture which he purchased at a very reasonable price.  To begin with, he hired only a lad; it would be seen in a month or so whether he had need of more assistance.  If business grew, he was ready to take upon himself a double share, for the greater his occupation the less his time for brooding.  Labour was what he asked, steady, dogged toil; and his only regret was that he could not work with his hands in the open air, at some day-long employment followed by hunger and weariness and dreamless sleep.

The partner whose name he did not wish to mention was John Jacks.  Very soon after learning the result to the young man of Jerome Otway’s death (the knowledge came in an indirect way half a year later), Mr. Jacks wrote to Piers a letter implying what he knew, and made offer of a certain capital towards the proposed business.  Piers did not at once accept the offer, for difficulties had arisen on the side of his friend Moncharmont, who, on Otway’s announcement of inability to carry out the scheme they had formed together, turned in another direction.  A year passed; John Jacks again wrote; and, Moncharmont’s other projects having come to nothing, the friends decided at length to revert to their original plan, with the difference that a third partner supplied capital equal to that which Moncharmont himself put into the venture.  The arrangement was strictly business-like; John Jacks, for all his kindliness, had no belief in anything else where money was concerned, and Piers Otway would not have listened to any other sort of suggestion.  Piers put into the affair only his brains, his vigour, and his experience; he was to reap no reward but that fairly resulting from the exercise of these qualities.

Only a day or two before leaving Odessa he received a letter from Mrs. Hannaford, in which she hinted that Irene Derwent was likely to marry.  On reaching London, he found at the hotel her answer to his reply; she now named Miss Derwent’s wooer, and spoke as if the marriage were practically a settled thing.  This turned to an ordeal for Piers what would otherwise have been a pleasure, his call upon John Jacks.  He had to dine at Queen’s Gate; be had to converse with Arnold Jacks; and for the first time in his life he knew the meaning of personal jealousy.

The sight of Irene’s successful lover made active in him what had for years been only a latent passion.  All at once it seemed impossible that he should have lost what hitherto he had scarcely ever felt it possible to win.  An unconsciously reared edifice of hope collapsed about him, laid waste his life, left him standing in desolate revolt against fate.  Arnold Jacks was the embodiment of a cruel destiny; Piers regarded him, not so much with hate, as with a certain