Had anything that Mary said recurred to Hesper, she would have thought of it only as the poor sentimentality of a low education.
But Hesper did not think of Mary's position as low; that would have been to measure it; and it did not once suggest itself as having any relation to any life in which she was interested.

She saw no difference of level between Mary and the lawyer who came about her marriage settlements: they were together beyond her social horizon.

In like manner, moral differences--and that in her own class--were almost equally beyond recognition.

If by neglect of its wings, an eagle should sink to a dodo, it would then recognize only the laws of dodo life.

For the dodos of humanity, did not one believe in a consuming fire and an outer darkness, what would be left us but an ever-renewed _alas_! It is truth and not imperturbability that a man's nature requires of him; it is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as the test; it is love, and no amount of flattery that will prosper; differences wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to a hair's breadth in that day; the customs of the trade and the picking of pockets will go together, with the greater excuse for the greater need and the less knowledge; liars the most gentleman-like and the most rowdy will go as liars; the first shall be last, and the last first.
Hesper's day drew on.