Salvina flushed. "I don't, either—if he were to treat me as mother has been treated."
"Yes, no one has had a life like mine, since the world began," moaned Mrs. Brill, and her waning tears returned in full flood.
"My poor mammy," and Salvina put a handkerchief to the flooded cheeks. "Come home, we have had enough of this."
Mrs. Brill rose obediently.
"Oh, yes, take her home," said Lazarus savagely, "take her to your shabby, stinking lodging, when she might have a house in Highbury New Park and three servants."
"She has a house at Hackney, and I'll give her a servant, too. Come, mother."
Salvina mopped up her mother's remaining tears, and with an inspiration of arrogant independence, she rang for Lazarus's servant and bade her hail a hansom cab.
"If you don't want all Hackney to come and gaze at a furnished road," she said, in parting, "you'll take away that furniture yourself."
Mrs. Brill bowled homeward, half consoled for everything by this charioted magnificence. Some neighbours stood by gossiping as she alighted, and then her unspoken satisfaction was complete.