"There were, of course, young Aaron Levison and his wife, Rebecca--the latter young, pretty, fond of pleasure, and above all of dancing, and he, a few years older, but still in the prime of life, more of an athlete than a business man, and yet tied to the shop in which he carried on the trade of pawnbroking for his mother. The latter, an old Jewess, shrewd and dictatorial, was the owner of the business: her son was not even her partner, only a well-paid clerk in her employ, and this fact we must suppose rankled in the mind of her smart daughter-in-law. At any rate, we know that there was no love lost between the two ladies; but the young couple and old Mrs. Levison and another unmarried son lived together in the substantial house over the shop in Bishop's Road. "They had three servants and we are told that they lived well, old Mrs. Levison bearing the bulk of the cost of housekeeping. The younger son, Reuben, seems to have been something of a bad egg; he held at one time a clerkship in a bank, but was dismissed for insobriety and laziness; then after the war he was supposed to have bad health consequent on exposure in the trenches, and had not done a day's work since he was demobilised. But in spite, or perhaps because, of this, he was very markedly his mother's favourite; where the old woman would stint her hard-working, steady elder son, she would prove generous, even lavish, toward the loafer, Reuben; and young Mrs. Levison and he were thick as thieves. "What money Reuben extracted out of his mother he would spend on amusements, and his sister-in-law was always ready to accompany him. It was either the cinema or dancing--oh, dancing above all! Rebecca Levison was, it seems, a beautiful dancer, and night after night she and Reuben would go to one or other of the halls or hotels where dancing was going on, and often they would not return until the small hours of the morning. "Aaron Levison was indulgent and easy-going enough where his young wife was concerned: he thought that she could come to no harm while Reuben was there to look after her. But old Mrs. Levison, with the mistrust of her race for everything that is frivolous and thriftless, thought otherwise. She was convinced in her own mind that her beloved Reuben was being led astray from the path of virtue by his brother's wife, and she appears to have taken every opportunity to impress her thoughts and her fears upon the indulgent husband.