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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: the vision of the dire exposure of a being whom vanity had put so
off her guard. Hers was the only vanity I have ever known that
made its possessor superlatively soft. Mrs. Meldrum's further
information contributed moreover to these indulgences--her account
of the girl's neglected childhood and queer continental
relegations, with straying squabbling Monte-Carlo-haunting parents;
the more invidious picture, above all, of her pecuniary
arrangement, still in force, with the Hammond Synges, who really,
though they never took her out--practically she went out alone--had
their hands half the time in her pocket. She had to pay for
everything, down to her share of the wine-bills and the horses'
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