Not through her affections,--those he scarce hoped for,--but through her inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he contemplated the path to his victory over her soul and her fate.

And so resolute, so wily, so unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon all the subtlest keys and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear of the ultimate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which he had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of a rival; the ardent and almost purifying love, which, escaping a while from all the demons he had evoked, she had, with a girl's frank heart and impulse, conceived for Mainwaring.

And here, indeed, was the great crisis in Lucretia's life and destiny.

So interwoven with her nature had become the hard calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her now was the zest for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot, and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to depict in the villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never become a character thoroughly amiable and honest.

But with a happy and well-placed love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her restless energies, the woman's natural field in sympathies for another.
The heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously the interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and ingenuous mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious), might have had their redeeming and hallowing influence.