At nineteen she had looked older than she was,
now she looked much younger; indeed she looked hardly older than
when Ernest had last seen her, and it would have taken a man of much
greater experience than he possessed to suspect how completely she had
fallen from her first estate. It never occurred to him that the poor
condition of her wardrobe was due to her passion for ardent spirits,
and that first and last she had served five or six times as much
time in gaol as he had. He ascribed the poverty of her attire to the
attempts to keep herself respectable, which Ellen during supper had
more than once alluded to. He had been charmed with the way in which
she had declared that a pint of beer would make her tipsy, and had
only allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole after a good
deal of remonstrance. To him she appeared a very angel dropped from
the sky, and all the more easy to get on with for being a fallen one.
As he walked up Fetter Lane with her towards Laystall Street, he
thought of the wonderful goodness of God towards him in throwing in
his way the very person of all others whom he was most glad to see,
and whom, of all others, in spite of her living so near him, he
might have never fallen in with but for a happy accident.
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