"You liar--you beast of a liar!" exclaimed Fan, still torn with the rage
that possessed her. "Go away, you liar! Leave me, you wicked devil! I
hate you! I hate you!"

Miss Starbrow uttered a little scornful laugh. "You would have some
reason to hate me if I were to shut you up for six months with hard
labour," she answered, turning aside as if about to walk away.

To shut her up for six months! Yes, that was what she had tried to do
with the assistance of a strong man and woman. And what other tortures
and sufferings had she intended to inflict on her victim! It was too much
to be reminded of this. It turned her blood into liquid fire, and
maddened her brain; and struggling to find words to speak the rage that
overmastered her, suddenly, as if by a miracle, every evil term of
reproach, every profane and blasphemous expression of drunken brutish
anger she had heard and shuddered at in the old days in Moon Street,
flashed back into her mind, and she poured them out in a furious torrent,
hurled them at her torturer; and then, exhausted, sunk back into her
seat, and covering her face again, sobbed convulsively.

Miss Starbrow's face turned crimson with shame, and she moved two or
three steps away; then she turned, and said in cold incisive tones:

"I see, Fan, that you have not forgotten all the nice things you learnt
before I took you out of the slums to shelter and feed and clothe you.
This will be a lesson to me: I had not thought so meanly of the suffering
poor as you make me think. They say that even dogs are grateful to those
that feed them. And I did more than feed you, Fan. That's the last word
you will ever hear from me."