Salvina wavered, but her instinct was repugnant to money that did not accumulate itself by slow, painful economies, and her multifarious reading had made the word "Speculation" a prism of glittering vice. "I daresay _you_ think it's not wrong," she said, "and I apologize if I hurt your feelings. But don't you see how you go about unsettling people?" "Me! Why, I settle them! And if you'd only give me your sister's address--" His persistency played upon Salvina's delicate conscience; made her feel she must not refuse the poor man everything. Besides, the grand address would choke him off. "She's at Bedford Square, with the Samuelsons." "Ah, I know. Two daughters, Lily and Mabel," and Sugarman instead of being impressed nodded his head, as if even the Samuelsons were mortal and marriageable. "Yes, my sister is their governess and companion. But you'll only waste your time." "You think so?" he said triumphantly. "Look at this likeness!" And he drew out the photograph of a coarse-faced middle-aged man, with a jaunty flower in his frock-coat and a prosperous abdomen supporting a heavily trinketed watch-chain. Underneath swaggered the signature, "Yours truly, Moss M. Rosenstein." Salvina shuddered: "He was wise to send _you_," she said slyly. "Is it not so? Ah, and your brother, too, would have done better to come to me instead of falling in love with a girl with a hundred pounds. But I bear your family no grudge, you see. Perhaps it is not too late yet. Tell Lazarus that if he should come to break with the Jonases, there are better fish in the sea--gold fish, too. Good-bye. We shall both dance at your sister's wedding." And he tripped off. Salvina resumed her Greek, but the grotesque aorists could not hold her attention. She was hungry and worn out, and even when her mother came, it would be some time before her evening meal could be prepared. She felt she must sit down, if only on her doorsteps, but their whiteness was inordinately marred as by many dirty boots--she wondered whose and why--and she had to content herself with leaning against the stucco balustrade. And gradually as the summer twilight faded, the grammar dropped in her hand, and Salvina fell a-dreaming. What did she dream of, this Board School drudge, whose pasty face was craned curiously forward on sloping shoulders? Was it of the enchanted land of love of which Sugarman had reminded her, but over whose roses he had tramped so grossly? Alas! Sugarman himself had never thought of her as a client for any but the lottery section of his business. Within, she was one glow of eager romance, of honour, of quixotic duty, but no ray of this pierced without to give a sparkle to the eye, a colour to the cheek. No faintest dash of coquetry betrayed the yearning of the soul or gave grace to walk or gesture: her dress was merely a tidy covering. Her exquisite sensibility found bodily expression only as a clumsy shyness. Poor Salvina! II