Jacob Vaark, a moderately wealthy trader, seeks to fill his void in life with luxury items and money. Jacob’s family abandons him at a very young age, leaving him as a poor, lonely orphan. Very suddenly, Jacob inherits his family’s land in New York, and Jacob sees a rapid rise in wealth and class. He steadily makes a good income from trading goods around northeast America, and he has enough money to live comfortably. During a visit to collect a debt from a previously rich family, the D’Ortegas, his thoughts on them are extremely negative and envious. He is jealous of their house, their belongings, and their expensive, useless luxury items. Jacob cannot rest at night, because “his dreams were of a grand house of many rooms rising on a hill above
