ownward progress. She was not worse now than she had been in the days
of her prosperity--only a little down on her luck.

As for Mrs. Amelia, she was a woman of such a soft and foolish
disposition that when she heard of anybody unhappy, her heart
straightway melted towards the sufferer; and as she had never thought
or done anything mortally guilty herself, she had not that abhorrence
for wickedness which distinguishes moralists much more knowing. If she
spoiled everybody who came near her with kindness and compliments--if
she begged pardon of all her servants for troubling them to answer the
bell--if she apologized to a shopboy who showed her a piece of silk, or
made a curtsey to a street-sweeper with a complimentary remark upon
the elegant state of his crossing--and she was almost capable of every
one of these follies--the notion that an old acquaintance was
miserable was sure to soften her heart; nor would she hear of anybody's
being deservedly unhappy. A world under such legislation as hers would
not be a very orderly place of abode; but there are not many women, at
least not of the rulers, who are of her sort. This lady, I believe,
would have abolished all gaols, punishments, handcuffs, whippings,
poverty, sickness, hunger, in the world, and was such a mean-spirited
creature that--we are obliged to confess it--she could even forget a
mortal injury.

When the Major heard from Jos of the sentimental adventure which had
just befallen the latter, he was not, it must be owned, nearly as much
interested as the gentleman from Bengal. On the contrary, his
excitement was quite the reverse from a pleasurable one; he made use of
a brief but improper expression regarding a poor woman in distress,
saying, in fact, "The little minx, has she come to light again?" He
never had had the slightest liking for her, but had heartily mistrusted
her from the very first moment when her green eyes had looked at, and
turned away from, his own.

"That little devil brings mischief wherever she goes," the Major said
disrespectfully. "Who knows what sort of life she has been leading?
And what business has she here abroad and alone? Don't tell me about
persecutors and enemies; an honest woman always has friends and never
is separated from her family. Why has she left her husband? He may
have been disreputable and wicked, as you say. He always was. I
remember the confounded blackleg and the way in which he used to cheat
and hoodwink poor