Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/244

 With which testimony, candid, fervent, and generous withal, Becky's case can be considered closed. Discredited, humiliated, and punished in the irrepressible interests of morality, she is left stranded amid life's minor respectabilities which must have irked her sorely; but which Thackeray plainly considered to be far beyond her merits. I hope it comforts her in that shadowy land where dwell the immortals of fiction to know that her shameless little figure, flitting dauntlessly from venture to venture, from hazard to hazard, has never been without appreciative observers. I had almost said appreciative and pitying observers; but Becky's is the last ghost in Christendom whom I should dare to affront with pity.