if girls who work for their bread have any business to be pretty,--
which she isn't. Pretty servants, indeed! going mincing about with
their fal-lal faces, as if even the flies would spoil 'em. But I
know what a bad man you are--now, it's no use your denying it; for
didn't I overhear you talking to Mr. Prettyman, and didn't you say
that you couldn't bear to have ugly servants about you? I ask you,--
didn't you say that?

"PERHAPS YOU DID?

"You don't blush to confess it? If your principles, Mr. Caudle,
aren't enough to make a woman's blood run cold!

"Oh, yes! you've talked that stuff again and again; and once I might
have believed it; but I know a little more of you now. You like to
see pretty servants, just as you like to see pretty statues, and
pretty pictures, and pretty flowers, and anything in nature that's
pretty, just, as you say, for the eye to feed upon. Yes; I know your
eyes,--very well. I know what they were ten years ago; for shall I
ever forget that glass of wine when little Jack was in arms? I don't
care if it was a thousand years ago, it's as fresh as yesterday, and
I never will cease to talk of it. When you know me, how can you ask
it?

"And now you insist upon keeping Kitty, when there's no having a bit
of crockery for her? That girl would break the Bank of England--I
know she would--if she was to put her hand upon it. But what's a
whole set of blue china to her beautiful blue eyes? I know that's
what you mean, though you don't say it.