had been accustomed
to dictate, and that, as he had left her when he was a boy, she had perhaps
indulged the dream that he would come back a boy. She was still sore on the
point of his politics. These things could not be helped, but, so far as he
could, he wished to make the rest of her life as cheerful as possible.
    Esther listened eagerly, and took these things to heart. The claim to an
inheritance, the sudden discovery of a right to a fortune held by others, was
acquiring a very distinct and unexpected meaning for her. Every day she was
getting more clearly into her imagination what it would be to abandon her own
past, and what she would enter into in exchange for it; what it would be to
disturb a long possession, and how difficult it was to fix a point at which the
disturbance might begin, so as to be contemplated without pain.
    Harold Transome's thoughts turned on the same subject, but accompanied by a
different state of feeling and with more definite resolutions. He saw a mode of
reconciling all difficulties which looked pleasanter to him the longer he looked
at Esther. When she had been hardly a week in the house, he had made up his mind
to marry her; and it had never entered into that mind that the decision did not
rest entirely with his inclination. It was not that he thought slightly of
Esther's demands; he saw that she would require considerable attractions to
please her, and that there were difficulties to be overcome. She was clearly a
girl who must be wooed; but Harold did not despair of presenting the requisite
attractions, and the difficulties gave more interest to the wooing than he could
have believed. When he had said that he would not marry an Englishwoman, he had
always made a mental reservation in favour of peculiar circumstances; and now
the peculiar circumstances were come. To be deeply in love was a catastrophe not
likely to happen to him; but he was readily amorous. No woman could make him
miserable, but he was sensitive to the presence of women, and was kind to them;
not with grimaces, like a man of mere gallantry, but beamingly, easily, like a
man of genuine good- And each day that he was near Esther, the solution of all
difficulties by marriage became a more pleasing prospect; though he had to
confess to himself that the difficulties did not diminish on a nearer view, in
spite of the flattering sense that she brightened at his approach.
    Harold was not one to fail in a purpose for want of