She admired people
because they were rich, because they were high-placed, because they
were courted, because they were respected; not because they were
good, because they were wise, because they were noble-natured,
because they were respect-worthy.
But even that was not all. In time, Herminia began to perceive
with still profounder sorrow that Dolly had no spontaneous care or
regard for righteousness. Right and wrong meant to her only what
was usual and the opposite. She seemed incapable of considering
the intrinsic nature of any act in itself apart from the praise or
blame meted out to it by society. In short, she was sunk in the
same ineffable slough of moral darkness as the ordinary inhabitant
of the morass of London.
To Herminia this slow discovery, as it dawned bit by bit upon her,
put the final thorn in her crown of martyrdom. The child on whose
education she had spent so much pains, the child whose success in
the deep things of life was to atone for her own failure, the child
who was born to be the apostle of freedom to her sisters in
darkness, had turned out in the most earnest essentials of
character a complete disappointment, and had ruined the last hope
that bound her to existence.
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