The face of
truth, like the face of many a good woman, is liable to the accident
of ugliness, and the desire to embellish one as well as the other
need not necessarily proceed from anything more harmful than an
overweighted love of the beautiful.
If the old lady had not been restored to her fortune, her _personalia_
would have remained in the oblivion which, as one might say, had
accumulated upon everything belonging to her. But after that newspaper
paragraph, there was such a flowering of memory around her name as
would have done credit to a whole cemetery on All Saints. It took
three generations to do justice to the old lady, for so long and so
slow had been her descent into poverty that a grandmother was needed
to remember her setting out upon the road to it.
She set out as most people do, well provided with money, diamonds,
pretty clothing, handsome residence, equipage, opera-box, beaus (for
she was a widow), and so many, many friends that she could never
indulge in a small party--she always had to give a grand ball
to accommodate them. She made quite an occasion of her first
reverse,--some litigation decided against her,--and said it came from
the court's' having only one ear, and that preempted by the other
party.
She always said whatever she thought, regardless of the consequences,
because she averred truth was so much more interesting than falsehood.
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