As it was, however, this discovery was yet far from him.
The function of passing a moral judgment on Claudia's conduct at this juncture is one that the historian respectfully declines.

It is easy to blame fair damsels for recklessness in the use of their dangerous weapons; and if they take the censure to heart--which is not usually the case--easy again to charge them with self-consciousness or self-conceit.
We do not know their temptations and may not presume to judge them.

And it may well be thought that Claudia would have been guilty of an excessive appreciation of herself had her conduct been influenced by the thought that such a man as Stafford was likely to fall in love with her.
Of the conscious design of attracting him she must be acquitted, for she acted under the force of a strong attraction exercised by him.

Her mind was not entirely engrossed in the pleasures, and what she imagined to be the duties, of her station.

She had a considerable, if untrained and erratic, instinct toward religion, and exhibited that leaning toward the mysterious and visionary which is the common mark of an acute mind that has not been presented with any methodical course of training worthy of its abilities.