And the news of the reduction of her family
to utter poverty awakens no emotion save on her own behalf alone. Yet,
ever and anon, faint gleams of tenderness towards her gentle mother break
forth, though soon obscured by the bitter insistance with which her own
claims to station, wealth, and luxury assert themselves. Her first
acceptance of Grandcourt represents this phase of her twofold nature; her
rejection of him and flight from him, after her interview with Mrs
Glasher, are equally characteristic of the second. That rejection is
actuated much more by resentment against Mrs Glasher, that she should
have dared to anticipate her in anything resembling affection he had to
give, and against him, that he should have presumed to offer to her a
heart already sealed to anything resembling love, than by the faintest
approach to it in her own. The leap, as it were, by which she ultimately
accepts him, is merely a quick, half-conscious instinct to secure her own
deliverance from poverty, and the attainment of those higher external
enjoyments of life for which she conceived herself formed; and if, in
addition, a thought of relieving the wants of her mother and sisters
obtrudes, it holds only a very secondary place in her mind.
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