In her turn Esther had been awakened, as she was every morning, by a sort of dull buzzing, which for a space continued and finally died away. It was Reuben droning the morning prayers in the lower hall in presence of his mother and the aged servant, Maud. She raised herself upon her elbow and glanced about her with an expression of disgust. However, there was nothing displeasing to the sight about the chamber. To be sure, the appointments were of the simplest description, and the walls were bare; but everything exhaled the perfection of neatness and propriety. The window opened upon extensive meadows, called Tothill Fields, where some years later rose the quarter known as Pimlico. On this side no building intercepted the light of day; consequently the fresh, pure radiance of morning flooded the room, flecking the draperies and white furniture. But Esther for a long time had indulged herself in a dream of luxury and grandeur. It seemed to her that each night renewed for her special benefit the story of Cinderella. During the entire evening she walked in her glory beneath the fire of glances, like a little queen, envied, admired, adored, tasting, as an homage more enduring than the applause of men, the jealousy of her comrades. The curtain having fallen, the beautiful costume replaced by a modest gown of some dark stuff, she escaped from the scene of her triumph with her arm firmly locked in that of Mrs. Marsham. When she awoke in the morning there was nothing to prevent her from believing that it had all been a dream, and that she was after all only an ordinary little being destined to set a good example to her neighbors, and be the joy of some commonplace, honest husband. What was there in store for her but to share this insipid existence, take her part in the usual housework, and listen to the babble of her aunt, who represented simple, tender devotion, as Reuben was the exponent of the suspicious and fierce kind? But patience! It would not be long ere emancipation would lend her wings to escape from this irksome prison.