Aaron Rockharrt was an incarnation of monstrous selfishness.

His manners to all, but especially to his dependants, were arrogant,
egotistical and overbearing. He was utterly destitute of sympathy or
compassion. There was no room for either in a soul so full of self. In
his opinion there was no one on earth, neither king nor Kaiser, saint
nor hero, so important to the universe as Aaron Rockharrt, head of
Rockharrt & Sons.

Yet Aaron Rockharrt had two redeeming points. He was strictly truthful
in word and honest in deed.

His wife was near his own age, a quiet, gentle, little old lady, small
and slim, with white hair half hidden by a lace cap. If she ever had any
individuality, it had been quite crushed out by the hard heel of her
husband's iron will. Their eldest son and second partner in the firm was
Fabian Rockharrt, a fine animal of fifty years old, though scarcely
looking forty. He had inherited all his father's great strength of body
and of mind, with more than his father's business talent; but he had
not inherited the truth and honesty of his father.

Yet there is no one wholly evil, and Fabian Rockharrt's one redeeming
quality was a certain good nature or benevolence which is more the
result of temperament than of principle. This quality rendered his
manner so kind and considerate to all his employes that he was the most
popular member of his family.

Clarence, the second son, was much younger than his elder brother, and
so diametrically opposite to him and to their father, both in person and
character, that he scarcely seemed to come of the same race.