CHAPTER XI.
FRAUD CUTS HIS FINGERS WITH HIS OWN EDGED TOOLS.
Unpleasant as it is to feel obliged to be the usher of ill company, I must now introduce to the fastidious public a brace of characters any thing but reputable.

It were possible indeed to slur them over with a word; but I have deeper ends in view for a glance so superficial: we may learn a lesson in charity, we may gain some schooling of the heart, even from those "ladies-legatees." Do you remember them, the supposititious nieces, aiders and abetters in our stock-jobber's forged will?
Two flashy, showy women, _not_ of easy virtue, but of none at all--special intimates of John Dillaway, and the genus of his like, and habitual frequenters of divers choice and pleasant places of resort.
The reason of their introduction here is two-fold: first, they have to play a part in our tale--a part of righteous retribution; and, secondly, they have to instruct us incidentally in this lesson of true morals and human charity--dread, denounce, and hate the sin, but feel a just compassion for the sinner.

Let us take the latter object first, and bear with the brief epitome of facts which have blighted those unfortunates to what they are.
Look at these two women, impudent brawlers, foul with vice: can there be any excuses made for them, considered as distinct from their condition?
God knoweth: listen to their histories; and fear not that thy virtuous glance will be harmed or misdirected, or a minute of thy precious time ill-spent.
Anna Bates and Julia Manners (their latest _noms de guerre_ will serve all nominative purposes as well as any other) had arrived at the same lowest level of female degradation by very different downward roads.
Anna's father had been a country curate, unfortunate through life, because utterly imprudent, and neither too wise a man nor too good a one, or depend upon it his orphan could not have come to this: "Never saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." But the father died carelessly as he had lived--in debt, with all his little affairs at sixes and sevens; and his widow with her budding daughter, saving almost nothing from the wreck, set up for milliners at Hull.

Then did the mother pique herself upon playing her cards cleverly; for gallant Captain Croker was quite smitten with the girl.

Poor child--she loved, listened, and was lost; a more systematic traitor of affection never breathed than that fine man; so she left by night her soft intriguing broken-spirited mother, followed her Lothario from barrack to barrack, and at last--he flung her away! Who can wonder at the reckless and dissolute result?
Whom had she to care for her--whom had she to love?
She must live thus, or starve.