Read "The Keeper of Conscience" by Israel Zangwill online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
They moved into the new-old house, after Salvina had carefully ascertained that the furniture had returned to the cloud under which it had so long lived. In her resentment against its reappearance, she spent more than she could afford on the rival furniture that succeeded it, and which she now studied to make unlike it, so that quite without any touch of conscious taste, it became light, elegant, and even artistic in comparison with the old horsehair massiveness.
Then began a very bad year for Salvina, even though the Damocles sword of Kitty's dismissal never fell, and Lily's migration to the Cape with Moss M. Rosenstein left Kitty still in power as companion to Mabel, to judge at least by Kitty's not seeking the parental roof, even as visitor. Mrs. Brill's happiness did not keep pace with the restored grandeurs and Salvina's own spurt of hope died down. She grew wanner than ever, going listlessly to her work and returning limp and fagged out.