She had made it a stepping-stone to a higher place in society than the one to which she was born.

Still, above them stood many millionaire families, living in palace-homes, and through her daughter she meant to rise into one of them.

It mattered not for the personal quality of the scion of the house; he might be as coarse and common as his father before him, or weak, mean, selfish, and debased by sensual indulgence.

This was of little account.

To lift Edith to the higher social level was the all in all of Mrs.Dinneford's ambition.
But Mr.Dinneford taught Edith a nobler life-lesson than this, gave her better views of wedlock, pictured for her loving heart the bliss of a true marriage, sighing often as he did so, but unconsciously, at the lost fruition of his own sweet hopes.