,
would have sat on chairs and held their hats in their hands. The harder problems
of our life have changed less than our manners; we wrestle with the old sorrows,
but more decorously. Esther's inexperience prevented her from divining much
about this fine grey-haired woman, whom she could not help perceiving to stand
apart from the family group, as if there were some cause of isolation for her
both within and without. To her young heart there was a peculiar interest in Mrs
Transome. An elderly woman, whose beauty, position, and graceful kindness
towards herself, made deference to her spontaneous, was a new figure in Esther's
experience. Her quick light movement was always ready to anticipate what Mrs
Transome wanted; her bright apprehension and silvery speech were always ready to
cap Mrs Transome's narratives or instructions even about doses and liniments,
with some lively commentary. She must have behaved charmingly; for one day when
she had tripped across the room to put the screen just in the right place, Mrs
Transome said, taking her hand, »My dear, you make me wish I had a daughter!«
    That was pleasant; and so it was to be decked by Mrs Transome's own hands in
a set of turquoise ornaments, which became her wonderfully, worn with a white
Cashmere dress, which was also insisted on. Esther never reflected that there
was a double intention in these pretty ways towards her; with young generosity,
she was rather preoccupied by the desire to prove that she herself entertained
no low triumph in the fact that she had rights prejudicial to this family whose
life she was learning. And besides, through all Mrs Transome's perfect manners
there pierced some indefinable indications of a hidden anxiety much deeper than
anything she could feel about this affair of the estate - to which she often
alluded slightly as a reason for informing Esther of something. It was
impossible to mistake her for a happy woman; and young speculation is always
stirred by discontent for which there is no obvious cause. When we are older, we
take the uneasy eyes and the bitter lips more as a matter of course.
    But Harold Transome was more communicative about recent years than his
mother was. He thought it well that Esther should know how the fortune of his
family had been drained by law expenses, owing to suits mistakenly urged by her
family; he spoke of his mother's lonely life and pinched circumstances, of her
lack of comfort in her elder son, and of the habit she had consequently acquired
of looking at the gloomy side of things. He hinted that she