His business was at the tailor's; he ordered a suit of ceremony--the frock coat on which his brother Daniel had so pathetically insisted--and begged that it might be ready at the earliest possible moment.

Next he made certain purchases in haberdashery.

Through it all, he had a most oppressive feeling of self-contempt, which--Piers was but one-and-twenty--he did not try to analyze.

Every shop-mirror which reflected him seemed to present a malicious caricature; he hurried away on to the pavement, small, ignoble, silly.

His heart did battle, and at moments assailed him in a triumph of heroic desire; but then again came the sinking moments, the sense of a grovelling fellowship with people he despised.
It was raining.