His right hand professed complete ignorance of the doings of his left.
It may be that Isaac's heart was in his City shop.

But there was something in him greater than his heart, his ambition, which was colossal.

He meant, he always had meant, to be the founder of a great House, which should make the name of Rickman live after him.

He aimed at nothing less than supremacy.

He proposed to spread his nets till they had drawn in the greater part of the book trade of London; till Rickman's had reared its gigantic palaces in every district of the capital.