“Poor Alice! It’s a shame⁠—she’s always so generous with her cash. I’d have lent her a bob myself, only as like as not she’d bite my head off. It’s all very well for her to talk⁠—people are afraid of her tongue; there’s something about Alice that you can’t get over, she’s different to us.”

I never discovered the story of Alice. I do not believe her life holds any dark mystery or hideous secret. I should think she had drifted from the professional classes for purely economic reasons, and that her tragedy, like so many others, is merely lack of means.