A cut-glass chandelier filled with lighted candles hung like a giant
stalactite above its centre, radiating over large gilt-framed mirrors,
slabs of marble on the tops of side-tables, and heavy gold chairs with
crewel worked seats. Everything betokened that love of beauty so deeply
implanted in each family which has had its own way to make into Society,
out of the more vulgar heart of Nature. Swithin had indeed an impatience
of simplicity, a love of ormolu, which had always stamped him amongst
his associates as a man of great, if somewhat luxurious taste; and out
of the knowledge that no one could possibly enter his rooms without
perceiving him to be a man of wealth, he had derived a solid and
prolonged happiness such as perhaps no other circumstance in life had
afforded him.
Since his retirement from land agency, a profession deplorable in
his estimation, especially as to its auctioneering department, he had
abandoned himself to naturally aristocratic tastes.
The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly in
sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning till
night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions, a lingering
and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way and his own
fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction should never have
been allowed to soil his mind with work.
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