Dudley Storms was a lake of fire in a rim of ice, as somebody somewhere once said of someone else, and labored under peculiarities of temperament and trait-contradictions which you may have observed in Richard.

For his side, Mr.Bayard, proudly sensitive, while he never forgot, never failed to feel in the edge of that saving favor done him by Dudley Storms the edge of a sword; and this served to hold him aloof from one who any hour might have had his life and fortune, without a question, to do with as he would.
Richard had never met Mr.Bayard, nor did he know aught of that gentleman's long-ago disasters, for they occurred in the year of Richard's birth.

But he had heard his father speak of Mr.Bayard in terms of glowing praise; wherefore, when it became Richard's turn to know somewhat the ins and outs of Wall Street, a dark interior trade-region of which his ignorance for depth was like unto the depth of the ocean, and as wide, our young gentleman went instantly in search of him.

Had he beheld the softened eye of Mr.Bayard when that war-lord of the Street first read his card, had he heard his voice as he repeated the line "son of the late Mr.Dudley Storms," he might have been encouraged in a notion that he had not rapped at the wrong door.

But Richard, in the anteroom awaiting the return of that person of the serpent hiss, did not witness these phenomena.