Directly, the charcoal began to crackle in a broken furnace that stood within the fireplace, and the fumes of a fine beefsteak filled the chamber with an odor that had probably never visited it before. The famished old woman grew restless under this rich perfume. Her eyes gleamed, her fingers worked eagerly among the bed-clothes. At last she forgot the loss of her crucifix and every other pain, in the animal want thus keenly aroused. “Oh!” she said, snuffing up the fragrant smoke, as it floated over her, “how delicious it is! How I long for a mouthful. Jane Kelly, dear Jane Kelly, make haste. No matter if it is underdone—I like beefsteak any way. Just one mouthful, on a fork, Jane, while you cook the rest!” Jane Kelly laughed, and turned over the steak, pressing it beneath her knife till the juice ran out upon the coals, filling the room afresh with its appetizing fumes. “What are you laughing at?” cried the old woman, breaking into hysterical muttering. “I ask for a mouthful of steak and you laugh!” “I laugh, of course I do! Is there any law against laughing, let me ask?—anything immoral in it? because I’m getting rather particular on that point, since I handled the crucifix. Why shouldn’t I laugh, Madame De Marke?” “Oh! you should. Why not? I could laugh myself at the thoughts of our supper. I could—I, I’m laughing. Come, come, be quick. I want something to eat. I am dying for something to eat!” Here the old woman struggled up in bed, and held out her arms, working her lean fingers eagerly, like the claws of a hungry parrot. “Well, I hope you may get it!” said Jane, cruelly, “I hope you may get it!” “What! what do you mean?” faltered the poor woman, falling helplessly back on her pillow, with a look of pale horror. “What do you mean?” “I mean just what I say. That I hope you may get something to eat; for if you have one mouthful from me, it’ll be paid for, I tell you!” answered Jane, with brutal satisfaction. The poor woman uttered a faint moan, and the gleam of her hungry eyes was quenched in tears of cruel disappointment. “Oh! this is too wicked—you will not be so fiendish, Jane Kelly. If a mad dog, who had bitten you, were as hungry as I am, you would give him something to eat!” “Yes, of course I should. One cannot hate a brute beast enough to starve it to death. Besides, they do not lock each other up for false swearing. Oh, yes! I would give a piece of this steak to a hungry dog—or a hungry cat either. Here, Peg, Peg, come here, Peg!” As she spoke, Jane cast off a fragment of the steak, and held it up at a tantalizing height above the eager cat, who mewed, and leaped, and quivered all over with impatience, to seize upon it. Madame De Marke watched the contest with gleaming eyes. When she saw the fragment fall, to be pounced upon by the voracious cat, a sharp yell broke from her, and she cried out with the pang of a mother over her ungrateful child.