It comes
in so many forms in this life of ours - the knowledge that there is something
sweetest and noblest of which we despair, and the sense of something present
that solicits us with an immediate and easy indulgence. And there is a
pernicious falsity in the pretence that a woman's love lies above the range of
such temptations.
    Day after day Esther had an arm offered her, had very beaming looks upon
her, had opportunities for a great deal of light, airy talk, in which she knew
herself to be charming, and had the attractive interest of noticing Harold's
practical cleverness - the masculine ease with which he governed everybody and
administered everything about him, without the least harshness, and with a
facile good-nature which yet was not weak. In the background, too, there was the
ever-present consideration, that if Harold Transome wished to marry her, and she
accepted him, the problem of her lot would be more easily solved than in any
other way. It was difficult by any theory of providence, or consideration of
results, to see a course which she could call duty: if something would come and
urge itself strongly as pleasure, and save her from the effort to find a clue of
principle amid the labyrinthine confusions of right and possession, the promise
could not but seem alluring. And yet, this life at Transome Court was not the
life of her day-dreams: there was dulness already in its ease, and in the
absence of high demand; and there was the vague consciousness that the love of
this not unfascinating man who hovered about her gave an air of moral mediocrity
to all her prospects. She would not have been able perhaps to define this
impression; but somehow or other by this elevation of fortune it seemed that the
higher ambition which had begun to spring in her was for ever nullified. All
life seemed cheapened; as it might seem to a young student who, having believed
that to gain a certain degree he must write a thesis in which he would bring his
powers to bear with memorable effect, suddenly ascertained that no thesis was
expected, but the sum (in English money) of twenty-seven pounds ten shillings
and sixpence.
    After all, she was a woman, and could not make her own lot. As she had once
said to Felix, »A woman must choose meaner things, because only meaner things
are offered to her.« Her lot is made for her by the love she accepts. And Esther
began to think that her lot was being made for her by the love that was
surrounding her with