noon
In all the offices there were iron safes , which gave one a notion of limitless wealth stored away in the shape of bonds and bills , if not actual gold and bank-notes ; and upon all the walls there were coloured and uncoloured engravings of ships framed and glazed , and catalogues of merchandise that had been sold , or was to be sold , hanging loosely one on the other . Besides these , there were a great many of those flimsy papers that record the state of things on ` Change , hanging here and there on the brass rails of the desks , from little hooks in the walls , and in any other available spot . And in all the premises there was an air of business and prosperity , which seemed to denote that Fenton and Co. were travelling at a rapid pace on the high-road to fortune . Gilbert Fenton sat in the inner office at noon one day about a week after his return from Lidford . He had come to business early that morning , had initialed a good many accounts , and written half-a-dozen letters already , and had thrown himself back in his easy-chair for a few minutes ' idle musing -- musing upon that one sweet dream of his new existence , of course . From whatever point his thoughts started , they always drifted into that channel . While he was sitting like this , with his hands in his pockets and his chair tilted upon its hind legs , the half-glass door opened , and a gentleman came into the office -- a man a little over middle height , broad-shouldered , and powerfully built , with a naturally dark complexion , which had been tanned still darker by sun and wind , black eyes and heavy black eyebrows , a head a little bald at the top , and a face that might have been called almost ugly but for the look of intellectual power in the broad open forehead and the perfect modelling of the flexible sensitive mouth ; a remarkable face altogether , not easily to be forgotten by those who had once looked upon it .