n which masses of purple
blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer
breeze touched it?

Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and
that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of
this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as
Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend
and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the
idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count
her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling
vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or
less meaning the difference between thousands and millions. Everybody
had agreed in assuring her that Mr. Smithson was inordinately rich.
Everybody had considered it his or her business to give her information
about the gentleman's income; clearly implying thereby that in the
opinion of society Mr. Smithson's merits as a suitor were a question of
so much bullion.

Could she doubt--she who had learned in one short season to know what
the world was made of and what it most valued--could she, steeped to the
lips in the wisdom of Lady Kirkbank's set, doubt for an instant that she
was making a better match in the eye of society, than if she had married
a man of the highest lineage in all England, a peer of the highest rank,
without large means? She knew that money was power, that a man might
begin life as a pot-boy or a greengrocer, a knacker or a dust
contractor, and climb to the topmost pinnacles, were he only rich
enough. She knew that society would eat such a man's dinners and dance
at his wife's balls, and pretend to think him an altogether exceptional
man, make believe to admire him for his own sake, to think his wife most
brilliant among women, if he were only rich enough. And could she doubt
that society would bow down to her as Lady Lesbia Smithson? She had
learned a great deal in her single season, and she knew how society was
influenced and governed, almost as well as Sir Robert Walpole knew how
human nature could be moulded and directed at the will of a shrewd
diplomatist. She knew that in the fashionable world every man and every
woman, every child even, has his or her price, and may be bought and
sold at pleasure. She had her price, she, Lesbia, the pearl of Grasmere;
and the price having been fairly bidden she had surrendered to the
bidder.