s not a woman who could be depended on for any
ordinary practical view. Mere material issues could never confuse her
estimate of spiritual values. To her, Rickman's conduct in that
instance was a flaw in honour, and as such she had already
sufficiently judged it. The significant thing was that he too should
have so judged it; that he should have been capable of such profound
suffering in the thought of it.

And now, somehow, it didn't seem to her to count.

It simply disappeared in her final pure and luminous view of Rickman's
character. What really counted was the alertness of his whole attitude
to honour, his readiness to follow the voice of his own ultimate
vision, to repudiate the unclean thing revealed in its uncleanness;
above all, what counted was his passionate sincerity. With her
unerring instinct of selection Lucia had again seized on the
essential. The triumph of Rickman's greater qualities appealed to her
as a spectacle; it was not spoiled for her by the reflection that she
personally had been more affected by his failure. If she showed her
insight into Rickman's character by admitting the relative
insignificance of that failure, she showed an equal insight into
Jewdwine's by suppressing all mention of it now. For Horace would have
regarded it as essential. It would have loomed large in his view by
reason of its material consequences. Allowing for Horace's view she
kept her portrait truer by omitting it.

And Jewdwine accepted her portrait as the true one. It appealed
irresistibly to his artistic sense. He was by profession a connoisseur
of things beautifully done. Rickman's behaviour, as described by
Lucia, revived his earlier amused admiration for his young disciple.
It was so like him. In its spontaneity, its unexpectedness, its--its
colossal impertinence, it was pure Rickman.

Lucia had achieved a masterpiece of appreciation.

But what helped him in his almost joyous re-discovery of his Rickman
was his perception that here (in doing justice to Rickman) lay his
chance of rehabilitating himself. If he could not buy back the Harden
library, he could at any rate redeem his own character. He did not
hold himself responsible for Lucia's father's debts, but he was
willing, not to say glad, to take up Lucia's. It was certainly most
improper that she should be under any obligation to Rickman. In any
case, Rickman's action concerned Lucia's family as much as Lucia; that
is to say, it was his (Jewdwine's) aff