Lucretia, with a hardness of mind that disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may be applied to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid infirmities of the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to which gold was a necessary instrument.

Wedded to one she loved, like Mainwaring, the ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could have lived in another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in the nobler desire for power based on fame and genius.

But now she had the gloomy cravings of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore herself to a lost position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to bitterness of all beings and all things around her.

She was gnawed by that false fever which riots in those who seek by outward seemings and distinctions to console themselves for the want of their own self-esteem, or who, despising the world with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt.
To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not only by his conversation, but his habits of life.

He mixed with those much wealthier than himself, but not better born; those who, in the hot and fierce ferment of that new society, were rising fast into new aristocracy,--the fortunate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of many an argosy that had been wrecked in the Great Storm.