‘Well, I think it’s very unkind, Emma.’

’Perhaps so, but I can’t help it:  It’s kind of you to offer, I feel that; but I’d rather work my fingers to the bone than touch one halfpenny now that I haven’t earned.’

Alice bridled slightly and urged no more.  She left before Kate returned.

In the course of the morning Emma strung herself to the effort of letting her sister know the true state of affairs.  It was only what Kate had for a long time suspected, and she freely said as much, expressing her sentiments with fluent indignation.

‘Of course I know you won’t hear of it,’ she said, ’but if I was in your place I’d make him smart.  I’d have him up and make him pay, see if I wouldn’t.  Trust him, he knows you’re too soft-hearted, and he takes advantage of you.  It’s girls like you as encourages men to think they can do as they like.  You’ve no right, you haven’t, to let him off.  I’d have him in the newspapers and show him up, see if I wouldn’t.  And he shan’t have it quite so easy as he thinks neither; I’ll go about and tell everybody as I know.  Only let him come a-lecturin’ hereabouts, that’s all!’

‘Kate,’ broke in the other, ’if you do anything of the kind, I don’t know how I shall speak to you again.  Its not you he’s harmed; you’ve no right to spread talk about me It’s my affair, and I must do as I think fit.  It’s all over and there’s no occasion for neither you nor me to speak of him again I’m going out this afternoon to find a room for us, and we shall be no worse off than we was before.  We’ve got to work, that’s all, and to earn our living like other women do.’

Her sister stared incredulously.

‘You mean to say he’s stopped sending money?’

‘I have refused to take it.’

‘You’ve done what?  Well, of all the—!’ Comparisons failed her.  ’And I’ve got to take these children back again into a hole like the last?  Not me!  You do as you like; I suppose you know your own business.  But if he doesn’t send the money as usual, I’ll find some way to make him, see if I don’t!  You’re off your head, I think.’

Emma had anticipated this, and was prepared to bear the brunt of her sister’s anger.  Kate was not originally blessed with much sweetness of disposition, and an unhappy marriage had made her into a sour, nagging woman.  But, in spite of her wretched temper and the low moral tone induced during her years of matrimony, she was not evil-natured, and her chief safeguard was affection for her sister Emma.  This seldom declared itself, for she was of those unhappily constituted people who find nothing so hard as to betray the tenderness of which they are capable, and, as often as not, are driven by a miserable perversity to words and actions which seem quite inconsistent with such feeling.  For Jane she had cared far less than for Emma, yet her grief at Jane’s death was more than could be gathered from her demeanour.  It had, in fact, resulted in a state of nervous irritableness;