Carruthers began to feel rather uncomfortably hot about the ears, and went creaking up the stairs to his wife's sitting-room, in order to divert his thoughts as soon as possible. He saw things by a clearer light now, and the recollection of his former conduct to George troubled him. He found his stepson and Mark Felton in Mrs. Carruthers's room. The day was chilly and gloomy, and eminently suggestive of the advantages possessed by an English country mansion over the most commodious and expensive of foreign lodging-houses. George had just placed a shawl round his mother's shoulders, and was improving the fastenings of the windows, which were in their normal condition in foreign parts. "Mark has been talking about Poynings," said Mrs. Carruthers, turning to her husband with a smile, "and says he never saw a place he admired more, though he had only a passing glimpse of it." Mr. Carruthers was pleased, though of course it was only natural that Mr. Felton should never have seen any place more to be admired by persons of well-regulated taste than Poynings. "Of course," he said, with modest admission, "if you come to talk about the Dukeries, and that kind of thing, there's nothing to be said for Poynings. But _it is_ a nice place, and I am very fond of it, and so is Laura." He was rather alarmed, when he had said this, to observe his wife's eyes full of tears. Tears indicated recollection, and of a painful kind, he thought, being but little acquainted with the intricate symptoms of feminine human nature, which recollection must be avoided, or turned aside, in a pleasurable direction. Now George's cleverness was a direction of the required kind, and Mr. Carruthers proceeded to remark that George must make drawings for his mother of all the favourite points of view at Poynings. "There's the terrace, George," he said, "and the 'Tangle,' where your mother loves to spend the summer afternoons, and there's the beech-wood, from the hill behind the garden, and the long avenue. There are several spots you will like, George, and--and," said Mr. Carruthers, magnanimously, and blushing all over his not much withered face, like a woman, "I'm only sorry you are to make acquaintance with them so late in the day."