Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/412

398 398 FL U T TER-D ( r CK.

" Me marry a Christian ! The idea ! "

Flutter-Duck fell a-sobbing on the fine lady's fur jacket. "And you never ran away with Lefkovitch? "

" Me take another woman's leavings? Well, upon my word ! "

" Oh," sobbed Flutter-Duck. " Oh, if your father could only have lived to know the truth ! "

Rachel's remorse became heartrending. " Is father dead?" she murmured with white lips. After awhile she drew her mother out of the babel, and giving her the bag to carry to save appearances, she walked slowly towards Liverpool Street, and took train with her for her pretty little cottage near Epping Forest.

Rachel's story was as simple as her mother's. After the showing up of Emanuel's duplicity, home had no longer the least attraction for her. Her nascent love for the migratory husband changed to a loathing that embraced the whole Ghetto in which such things were possible. Weary of Flutter- Duck's follies, indifferent to her father, she had long meditated joining her West-end girl-friend in the fur estab- lishment in Regent Street, but the blow precipitated matters. She felt she could not remain a night more under her mother's roof, and her father's clumsy comment was but salt on her wound. Her heart was hard against both ; month after month passed before her passionate, sullen nature would let her dwell on the thought of their trouble, and even then she felt that the motive of her flight was so plain that they would feel only remorse, not anxiety. They knew she could always earn her living, just as she knew they could always earn theirs. Living " in," and going out but rarely, and then in the fashionable districts, she never met any drift from the Ghetto, and the busy life of the populous establish- ment soon effaced the old, which faded to a forgotten dream.