But, somehow or other, in her original conformation there was the happy bias of the plantes towards the Pure and the Bright.

For, despite Helvetius, a common experience teaches us that though education and circumstances may mould the mass, Nature herself sometimes forms the individual, and throws into the clay, or its spirit, so much of beauty or deformity, that nothing can utterly subdue the original elements of character.

From sweets one draws poison--from poisons another extracts but sweets.

But I, often deeply pondering over the psychological history of Alice Darvil, think that one principal cause why she escaped the early contaminations around her was in the slow and protracted development of her intellectual faculties.

Whether or not the brutal violence of her father had in childhood acted through the nerves upon the brain, certain it is that until she knew Maltravers--until she loved--till she was cherished--her mind had seemed torpid and locked up.