In the position she at last takes up toward Ladislaw, there is no
approach to anything in the very least resembling love--even illicit and
overmastering passion. Of that her very nature is incapable. She is
influenced solely by resentment against her husband, and his failure to
fulfil her vain and self-absorbed dreams; by the hope that he will remove
her to a sphere which will give wider scope to her heartless selfishness,
and take her away from the social disappointments and humiliations into
which that selfishness has mainly plunged her. In every relation of life
near or far, important or trivial, amid all environments, under all
impulsion toward anything purer and better, Rosamond Vincy is ever the
same; as consistent and unvarying in her hard unwomanliness and
impenetrable, insistent self-seeking, as is Dorothea in every opposite
characteristic. And even while the picture in one way fascinates the
reader, it is the fascination of ever-increasing contempt and loathing
where the extremest charity can hardly even pity; and from it we ever
turn to that of St Theresa with the more intense refreshment alike of
mind and heart, and the deeper sense of its elevating and refining
influence.
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