Of that she was certain. Mrs.
Fyne could not undertake to give me an idea of their abominable
vulgarity. Flora used to tell her something of her life in that
household, over there, down Limehouse way. It was incredible. It passed
Mrs. Fyne's comprehension. It was a sort of moral savagery which she
could not have thought possible.
I, on the contrary, thought it very possible. I could imagine easily how
the poor girl must have been bewildered and hurt at her reception in that
household--envied for her past while delivered defenceless to the tender
mercies of people without any fineness either of feeling or mind, unable
to understand her misery, grossly curious, mistaking her manner for
disdain, her silent shrinking for pride. The wife of the "odious person"
was witless and fatuously conceited. Of the two girls of the house one
was pious and the other a romp; both were coarse-minded--if they may be
credited with any mind at all. The rather numerous men of the family
were dense and grumpy, or dense and jocose. None in that grubbing lot
had enough humanity to leave her alone.
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