About a year before this, Hewer had left the Torbys and had been engaged by Mrs. Grey. He deeply respected Mrs. Grey, but her household had not been congenial to him. In the first place there was an elderly maid in spectacles who managed everything, and had even attempted to manage Hewer. Then, Mrs. Grey was a widow with an only son, often away, and when he was away, Mrs. Grey dined by the library fire on a chop and rice pudding, and she sometimes omitted the chop; and though when Mr. Richard was at home, he was very gay and good-tempered, on the whole Hewer felt the position to be depressing; and when the Torbys humbly asked him to come back at a higher wage, he had consented. But he retained a strong admiration for Mrs. Grey. She was afraid of nothing, whereas he knew his present employers were afraid of many things--afraid of being laughed at, afraid of missing the turn of the social tide, afraid even of him, their butler, though they attempted to conceal this fear under a studied insolence of manner. It was because this insolence was not of the particular brand that Hewer admired that he had left them. He had often noticed, as he waited on table, that Mrs. Torby was afraid of having opinions; she always found out what other people thought about art and politics, and only when strongly backed by majority opinion would she express herself--with a good deal of arrogance. She never confessed ignorance of any subject under discussion--except possibly of a childhood friend. Mrs. Grey, on the other hand, ripped out her opinions with the utmost confidence, and could say, "No, my dear, I never heard of it," when some new school of art or thought was under discussion, in a tone that made those who had been somewhat overpraising it wonder if they had not, after all, been making fools of themselves. Mr. Richard was the same way--never afraid of what people would think of him; perhaps it might have been better if he had been, judging from what Hewer himself had thought of some of Mr. Richard's more youthful escapades.