Then, while my heart almost ceased beating, Miss Wilson told me in the kindest possible manner of her appreciation of the offer and also of her complete surprise. She said that while she esteemed me highly as a friend and liked me personally very much, she had not thought of me as a lover, and that she could not regard me in that light. To say that I was crushed by the blow, kindly as it had fallen, does not express my feelings. When, however, in reply to my question I learned that there was no one else--that she was still heart free, I gained courage; and when, before I had left her that evening, she had consented to leave the matter open until some future time, my hopes of ultimate success were very far from being destroyed. CHAPTER III. A CO-PARTNERSHIP DISSOLVED Before Mr. Derham had landed in England my feeling of dislike for my partner had increased materially. His own business, which had been represented as worth at least five hundred dollars per month to the firm, was, so far as I could see, largely a myth. He had a habit of arriving at the office at half-past ten or eleven o'clock, and leaving at three. By frequent demands on his father-in-law he kept himself in funds to provide for his extravagant living, and it seemed to me his principal object in coming to the office at all was to meet various fast-looking men who called there to see him. To cap the climax, he had a half-patronizing, half-nagging way of treating me that I simply could not put up with. I was doing all the business, earning all the money that was made, and this man was entitled to fifty per cent of the net results. I stood it for a few months, meanwhile writing fully to Mr. Derham of the position in which I was placed. Finally, on the 10th of March, 1871 when I saw on Bulkley's desk a note for a few hundred dollars, drawn to his own order and signed by him with the firm's name, and in response to my inquiry as to the meaning of it, he told me it was a little matter he was putting through by a friend for his own accommodation, I cut the knot and insisted on a dissolution of our co-partnership. I had to pay him a small sum to get his consent, and though I had to borrow the money to make the payment, I did so rather than have any litigation, which he threatened. It was with a feeling of immense relief that I went to the office the following morning, knowing that I was rid of the leaden weight which Mr. Derham had bound to me in an error of judgment, which he readily admitted. The sign was removed and in its place went up another bearing my name only. Although in the trade I enjoyed a fair measure of popularity, which is the key-note to a broker's success, I found my youth a disadvantage when it came to seeking important business.