ot stay to trace out, and which the closest criticism would fail
to exhaust. At the opening of their interview, she is in a struggle
between wishing and not wishing, and therefore not in a mood to "play
with reason and discourse." With her settled awe of purity, she cannot
but admit the law to be right, yet she sees not how, in the
circumstances, mercy can be wrong. At this thought her heart presently
kindles, her eloquence springs to work, and its tones grow deeper,
clearer, more penetrating, as point after point catches her mental
eye. Thenceforth it is a keen encounter of mind with mind; but on his
side it is the conscious logic of an adroit and practised lawyer, who
has full mastery of his case, and is prompt in all the turns of legal
ingenuity; while on her side it is the logic of nature's finest moral
instincts spontaneously using the forces of a quick, powerful, and
well-balanced intellect as their organ of expression. She perceives at
once how subtile and acute of apprehension he is; so, lest her speech
should have too much edge, she veils the matter in figures of a
somewhat enigmatical cast, because she knows that he will instantly
take the sense. Her instinctive knowledge of the human heart guides
her directly to his secret springs of action. With a tact that seems
like inspiration, she feels out his assailable points, and still
surprises and holds him with new and startling appeals to his
innermost feelings. At length, when, his wicked purpose being formed,
he goes to talking to her in riddles, she quickly understands him, but
thinks he is only testing her: her replies leave him in doubt whether
craft or innocence speaks in her: so she draws him on to speaking
plainer and plainer, till at last he makes a full and explicit avowal
of his inhuman baseness. He is especially caught, be it observed, "in
the strong toil" of her moral grace; at least he is pleased to think
so: and as he has been wont to pride himself on being a saint, so he
now takes refuge in the thought, "O cunning enemy, that to catch a
saint, with saints dost bait thy hook!"

It is not to be denied, indeed, that Isabella's chastity is rather too
demonstrative and self-pronounced; but this is because of the
unblushing and emphatic licentiousness of her social environment.
Goodness cannot remain undemonstrative amidst such a rank
demonstrativeness of its opposite: the necessity it is under of
fighting against so much and such aggressive evil forces