Salvina's pallid cheek coloured with modesty and resentment. "My sister doesn't need your services." "Maybe not," said Sugarman, unruffled. "But the young man does. He saw your sister once years ago, before he went to the Cape. Now he is a _Takif_ (rich man) and wants a wife." "He's not rich enough to buy Kitty." Salvina's romantic soul was outraged, and she spoke with unwonted asperity. "He is rich enough to buy Kitty all she wants. He is quite in love with her--she can ask for anything." "Then let him go and tell her so himself. What does he come to you for? He must be a very poor lover." "Poor! I tell you he is rolling in gold. It's the luckiest thing that could have happened to your family. You will all ride in your carriage. You ought to fall on your knees and bless me. Your sister is not so young any more, at nineteen a girl can't afford to sniff. Believe me there are thousands of girls who would jump at the chance--yes, girls with dowries, too. And your sister hasn't a penny." "My sister has a heart and a soul," retorted Salvina witheringly, "and she wants a heart and a soul to sympathize with hers, not a money-bag." "Then, won't you take a ticket for the lotte_ree_?" rejoined Sugarman pleasantly. "Then you get a money-bag of your own." "No, thank you." "Not even half a ticket? Only thirty-six shillings! You needn't pay me now. I trust you." She shook her head. "But think--I may win you the great prize--a hundred thousand marks." The sum fascinated Salvina, and for an instant her imagination played with its marvellous potentialities. They could all move to the country, and there among the birds and the flowers she could study all day long, and even try for a degree with Honours. Her father would be saved from the cigar factory, her sister from exile amid strangers, her mother should have a servant, her brother the wife he coveted. All her Spitalfields circle had speculated through Sugarman, not without encouraging hits. She smiled as she remembered the vendor of slippers who had won sixty pounds and was so puffed up that when his wife stopped in the street to speak to a shabby acquaintance, he cried vehemently, "Betsey, Betsey, do learn to behave according to your station." "You don't believe me?" said Sugarman, misapprehending her smile. "You can read it all for yourself. A hundred thousand marks, so sure my little Nehemiah shall see rejoicings. Look!" But Salvina waved back the thin rustling papers with their exotic Continental flavour. "Gambling is wicked," she said. Sugarman was incensed. "Me in a wicked business! Why, I know more Talmud than anybody in London, and can be called up the Law as _Morenu_! You'll say marrying is wicked, next. But they are both State Institutions. England is the only country in the world without a lotte_ree_."