They are idiosyncratic. Indeed, when we remember how greatly the
mental and moral faculties differ from brother to brother, the
product of the same two parental factors, can we wonder that they
differ much more from father to son, the product of one like factor
alone, diluted by the addition of a relatively unknown quality, the
maternal influence? However this may be, at any rate, Dolores
early began to strike out for herself all the most ordinary and
stereotyped opinions of British respectability. It seemed as if
they sprang up in her by unmitigated reversion. She had never
heard in the society of her mother's lodgings any but the freest
and most rational ideas; yet she herself seemed to hark back, of
internal congruity, to the lower and vulgarer moral plane of her
remoter ancestry. She showed her individuality only by evolving
for herself all the threadbare platitudes of ordinary convention.
Moreover, it is not parents who have most to do with moulding the
sentiments and opinions of their children. From the beginning,
Dolly thought better of the landlady's views and ideas than of her
mother's.
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