One might have imagined histories about her by the
hour, histories in which unworthy ambition, the desire for money, and an
entire absence of all decent feeling would play a conspicuous part.
As a matter of fact, she was not without her judges and biographers, even
in this shop-window stage of her career. Emmeline, aged ten, and Bert,
aged seven, had halted on the way from their obscure back street to the
minnow-stocked water of St. James's Park, and were critically examining
the hobble-skirted doll, and dissecting her character in no very tolerant
spirit. There is probably a latent enmity between the necessarily under-
clad and the unnecessarily overdressed, but a little kindness and good
fellowship on the part of the latter will often change the sentiment to
admiring devotion; if the lady in peach-coloured velvet and leopard skin
had worn a pleasant expression in addition to her other elaborate
furnishings, Emmeline at least might have respected and even loved her.
As it was, she gave her a horrible reputation, based chiefly on a
secondhand knowledge of gilded depravity derived from the conversation of
those who were skilled in the art of novelette reading; Bert filled in a
few damaging details from his own limited imagination.
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