It never could transcend the practical; there was no imagination to carry it beyond those narrow sordid confines, and Mr.Caryll had been a fool to have supposed that any other springs were pushing here.

Egotism, egotism, egotism! Its name, he thought, was surely Ostermore.

And again, as once before, under the like circumstances, he found more pity than scorn awaking in his heart.

The whole wasted, sterile life that lay behind this man; the unhappy, loveless home that stood about him now in his declining years were the fruits he had garnered from that consuming love of self with which the gods had cursed him.
The only ray to illumine the black desert of Ostermore's existence was the affection of his ward, Hortensia Winthrop, because in that one instance he had sunk his egotism a little, sparing a crumb of pity--for once in his life--for the child's orphanhood.

Had Ostermore been other than the man he was, his existence must have proved a burden beyond his strength.