Chapter 18 - Page 2

were natural and
congenial to her character. In short, she had what the world calls
common-sense: she revolted from the unpractical Utopianism of her
mother.

From a very early age, indeed, this false note in Dolly had begun
to make itself heard. While she was yet quite a child, Herminia
noticed with a certain tender but shrinking regret that Dolly
seemed to attach undue importance to the mere upholsteries and
equipages of life,--to rank, wealth, title, servants, carriages,
jewelry. At first, to be sure, Herminia hoped this might prove but
the passing foolishness of childhood: as Dolly grew up, however, it
became clearer each day that the defect was in the grain--that
Dolly's whole mind was incurably and congenitally aristocratic or
snobbish. She had that mean admiration for birth, position,
adventitious advantages, which is the mark of the beast in the
essentially aristocratic or snobbish nature. 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.

Bitterer trials remained. Herminia had acted through life to a
great extent with the idea ever consciously present to her mind
that she must answer to Dolly for every act and every feeling. She
had done all she did with a deep sense of responsibility. Now it
loomed by degrees upon her aching heart that Dolly's verdict would
in almost every case be a hostile one. The daughter was growing
old enough to question and criticise her mother's proceedings; she
was beginning to understand that some mysterious difference marked
off her own uncertain position in life from the solid position of