Richard, though a married man of only six weeks’ standing, had troubles altogether in excess of his satisfactions. Things were not as they should have been in that earthly paradise called New Wanley. It was not to be expected that the profits of that undertaking would be worth speaking of for some little time to come, but it was extremely desirable that it should pay its own expenses, and it began to be doubtful whether even this moderate success was being achieved. Various members of the directing committee had visited New Wanley recently, and Richard had talked to them in a somewhat discouraging tone; his fortune was not limitless, it had to be remembered; a considerable portion of old Mutimer’s money had lain in the vast Belwick concern of which he was senior partner; the surviving members of the firm were under no specified obligation to receive Richard himself as partner, and the product of the realised capital was a very different thing from the share in the profits which the old man had enjoyed. Other capital Richard had at his command, but already he was growing chary of encroachments upon principal. He began to murmur inwardly that the entire fortune did not lie at his disposal; willingly he would have allowed Alice a handsome portion; and as for ‘Arry, the inheritance was clearly going to be his ruin. The practical difficulties at New Wanley were proving considerable; the affair was viewed with hostility by ironmasters in general, and the results of such hostility were felt. But Richard was committed to his scheme; all his ambitions based themselves thereupon. And those ambitions grew daily. These greater troubles must to a certain extent solve themselves, but in Highbury it was evidently time, as Alice said, to ‘do something.’ His mother’s obstinacy stood in the way of almost every scheme that suggested itself. Richard was losing patience with the poor old woman, and suffered the more from his irritation because he would so gladly have behaved to her with filial kindness. One plan there was to which she might possibly agree, and even have pleasure in accepting it, but it was not easy to propose. The house in Wilton Square was still on his hands; upon the departure of Emma and her sister; a certain Mrs. Chattaway, a poor friend of old times, who somehow supported herself and a grandchild, had been put into the house as caretaker, for Richard could not sell all the furniture to which his mother was so attached, and he had waited for her return to reason before ultimately deciding how to act in that matter. Could he now ask the old woman to return to the Square, and, it might be, live there with Mrs. Chattaway? In that case both ‘Arry and Alice would have to leave London. On Saturday afternoon he had a long talk with his sister. To Alice also it had occurred that their mother’s return to the old abode might be desirable.