Since George Brian Brummell was also a member of the Brother Club, the rakes of high society always dressed flamboyantly. This gave Grenville a distinctly scholarly air; he dressed in a steady, understated manner, and beneath his thick brows were a pair of lively, intelligent eyes.
Emma was pregnant when she came to him. She was no longer as beautiful as a figure from an ancient Greek sculpture; her body had grown swollen, and her skin had broken out in rashes. At the time, she was being kept by a man named Harry. Emma often acted as hostess at dinners in his country estate, fully displaying her charm and pleasing his friends. Yet this somehow became Harry's excuse for accusing her—he believed the child in her belly was not his.
Had nothing unexpected happened, Emma might have ended up on the streets like Merope, or given birth in a foundling hospital and then lingered at death's door. But Grenville took her to Paddington and settled her there. He even brought over her mother—Mary, known as Mrs. Cadogan—to keep her company.
There were many ways for a man to spend money on a woman, broadly divided into two kinds. One was like La Traviata: after her death, she left behind a great many jewels, each bearing the initials of a different name, but that also meant she had never cut herself off from society. The other was Emma's kind: patiently waiting in a house in the suburbs for a man to "come home," until one day she was suddenly thrown out.
Despite everything she had gone through, Emma was still that beautiful girl from an utterly impoverished mining village. She had not learned to transform herself as Josephine had, becoming a star of Parisian society. It was precisely this pure beauty