"And why isn't the hall lamp alight?" he queried, as her white face showed itself in the dusky door-slit. "It looks so beastly shabby. The only light's in the kitchen; I daresay you and the mater are pigging there again. Why can't you live up to your position?" The unexpected reproach broke her down. "We have no position any more," she sobbed out. And all the long years of paralyzing economies swept back to her memory, all the painful progress--accelerated by her growing salary--from the Hounsditch apartments to the bow-windows and gas-chandeliers of Hackney! "What do you mean? What is the matter? Speak, you little fool! Don't cry." He came across the threshold and shook her roughly. "Father's run away with the furniture and some woman," she explained chokingly. "The devil!" The smart cane slipped from his fingers and he maintained his cigar in his mouth with difficulty. "Do you mean to say the old man has gone and--the beastly brute! The selfish hypocrite! But how could he get the furniture?" "He made mother go on a visit to the Borough." "The old fox! That's your religious chaps. I'll go and give 'em both brimstone. Where are they?" "I don't know where--but you must not--it is all too horrible. There's nothing even to sleep on. We thought of borrowing your furniture!" "What! And give the whole thing away to the Jonases--and lose Rhoda, perhaps. Good heavens, Sally. Don't be so beastly selfish. Think of the disgrace, if we can't cover it up." "The disgrace is for father, not for you." "Don't be an idiot. Old Jonas looked down on us enough already, and if it hadn't been for Kitty's calling on him in the Samuelsons' carriage, he might never have consented to the engagement." "Oh, dear!" said Salvina, melted afresh by this new aspect. "My poor Lazarus!" and she gazed dolefully at the handsome youth who had divided with Kitty the good looks of the family. "But still," she added consolingly, "you couldn't have married for a long time, anyhow." "I don't know so much. I had a very promising interview this afternoon with the manager of Granders Brothers, the big sponge-people." "But you don't understand travelling in sponge." "Pooh! Travelling's travelling. There's nothing to understand. Whatever the article is, you just tell lies about it." "Oh, Lazarus!" "Don't make eyes--you ain't pretty enough. What do you know of the world, you who live mewed up in a Board School? I daresay you believe all the rot you have to tell the little girls." Her brother's shot made a wound he had not intended. Salvina was at last reminded of her own relation to the sordid tragedy, of what the other teachers would think, ay, even the little girls, so sharp in all that did not concern school-learning. Would her pupils have any inkling of the cloud on teacher's home? Ah, her brother was right. This disgrace besplashed them all, and she saw herself confusedly as a tainted figure holding forth on honour and duty to rows of white pinafores. III