“A thousand dollars,” muttered Madame De Marke, turning to the wall with a stifled moan, “a thousand dollars. This wicked wretch has ruined me!”
“Why, you old hypocrite, I couldn’t take less. Did you expect me to make a Judas Iscariot of myself, and ask only thirty pieces of silver. I a’n’t so irreverent a creature as that, anyhow.”
“A thousand dollars!” moaned the old woman.
“Don’t fret about that, mother. The Jews a’n’t going to give more now than they did in old times; the ticket says ten dollars; the heathen wouldn’t raise another sixpence.”
“Ten dollars—ten dollars—and all in her hands,” muttered the old woman,—“why, ten dollars will last me two months, and she’ll use it up in a meal almost. Oh, if I were but strong and well!”
“But you a’n’t strong nor well either, so just make the best of it and stop whining. I’m tired of it, let me tell you!” said Jane, peremptorily. “Hush up, now, and not another whimper.”
The old woman turned her face upon the pillow, and wept out her grief in silence; she dared not disobey her hard task-mistress.
With a good deal of clatter and noise, Jane went about the room, kindling a fire from some charcoal she had brought in her basket, and setting out the broken dishes on the bottom of an old chair that had lost its back. An expression of almost fiendish satisfaction was on her face, adding to the repulsion which hardship and wickedness had already left there. She was evidently planning some new torture for the woman, who had so justly earned her vengeance.
Directly, the charcoal began to crackle in a broken furnace that stood within the fireplace, and the fumes of a fine beefsteak filled the chamber with an odor that had probably never visited it before.
The famished old woman grew restless under this rich perfume. Her eyes gleamed, her fingers worked eagerly among the bed-clothes. At last she forgot the loss of her crucifix and every other pain, in the animal want thus keenly aroused.