which would be rather a severe astonishment to Mr
Harold Transome, whose manners towards respectable agents were such as leave a
smart in a man of spirit.
    Under the stimulus of small many-mixed motives like these, a great deal of
business has been done in the world by well-clad and, in 1833, clean-shaven men,
whose names are on charity-lists, and who do not know that they are base. Mr
Johnson's character was not much more exceptional than his double chin.
    No system, religious or political, I believe, has laid it down as a
principle that all men are alike virtuous, or even that all the people rated for
£80 houses are an honour to their species.
 

                                   Chapter 38

 The down we rest on in our aëry dreams
 Has not been plucked from birds that live and smart:
 'Tis but warm snow, that melts not.
 
The story and the prospect revealed to Esther by the lawyers' letter, which she
and her father studied together, had made an impression on her very different
from what she had been used to figure to herself in her many daydreams as to the
effect of a sudden elevation in rank and fortune. In her day-dreams she had not
traced out the means by which such a change could be brought about; in fact, the
change had seemed impossible to her, except in her little private Utopia, which,
like other Utopias, was filled with delightful results, independent of
processes. But her mind had fixed itself habitually on the signs and luxuries of
ladyhood, for which she had the keenest perception. She had seen the very mat in
her carriage, had scented the dried rose-leaves in her corridors, had felt the
soft carpets under her pretty feet, and seen herself, as she rose from her sofa
cushions, in the crystal panel that reflected a long drawing-room, where the
conservatory flowers and the pictures of fair women left her still with the
supremacy of charm. She had trodden the marble-firm gravel of her garden-walks
and the soft deep turf of her lawn; she had had her servants about her filled
with adoring respect, because of her kindness as well as her grace and beauty;
and she had had several accomplished cavaliers all at once suing for her hand -
one of whom, uniting very high birth with long dark eyelashes and the most
distinguished talents, she secretly preferred, though his pride and hers
hindered an avowal, and supplied the inestimable interest of retardation. The
glimpses she had had in her brief life as a family governess, supplied her ready
faculty