The woman by a great effort succeeded in rising and crossing the threshold. Mrs. Lovett gave her a seat, and having presented her with a glass of cordial and a pie, she waited until the poor creature should be sufficiently recovered to speak composedly, and then she said to her with perfect calmness, as though she was by no manner of means personally interested in the matter—
"Now tell me—Is the man with moustache and the braided coat, who passed hastily up Bell Yard a few moments only before you, really your husband?"
"Yes, madam, that is Flukes—"
"Who?"
"Flukes, madam."
"And pray who and what is Flukes?"
"He was a tailor, and he might have been as respectable a man, and earned as honest and good a living as any one in the trade, but a love of idleness and dissipation undid him."
"Flukes—a tailor?"
"Yes, madam; and now that I am utterly destitute, and in want of the common necessaries of life, if I chance to meet him in the streets and ask him for the merest trifle to relieve my necessities, he flies from me in the manner he has done to-day."
"Indeed!"