Mrs. Lethbridge lived in London, in the not very aristocratic neighbourhood of Camden Town. She and Phoebe's mother had been married on the same day--one to a man whose miserly habits were unknown, and had, indeed, not at that time grown into a confirmed disease; the other to a bank clerk, who was expected to keep up the appearance of a gentleman, and fitly rear and educate a family, upon a salary of a hundred and eighty pounds a year. Fortunately for him and his wife, their family was not numerous, consisting of one son and one daughter. With Miser Farebrother they had nothing in common; he so clearly and unmistakably discouraged their attempts to cement an affectionate or even a friendly intimacy that they had gradually and surely dropped away from each other. This was a great grief to the sisters, but the edict issued by Miser Farebrother was not to be disputed. "I will not allow your sister or her husband to come to the house," he had said to his wife when, in the early days of their married life, she remonstrated with him; later on she had not the courage or the spirit to expostulate against his harsh decrees, to which she submitted with a breaking heart. "They are a couple of busybodies, and you can tell them so if you please, with my compliments." Mrs. Farebrother did not tell her sister what her husband called them, but she wrote and said that for the sake of peace they had better not come to see her. The Lethbridges mournfully acquiesced; indeed, they had no alternative: they could not force themselves into the house of a man who would not receive them. "But if we can't go to her," said Mrs. Lethbridge, "Laura"--which was Mrs. Farebrother's Christian name--"can come to us." This, also, after a little while, Miser Farebrother would not allow. "I will not," he said, "have my affairs talked about by people who are not friendly to me." "That is your fancy," said Mrs. Farebrother; "they would be very happy if you would allow them to be friendly." "Of course," he sneered, "so that they could poke their heads into my business. I tell you I will not have it." She sighed, and submitted; and thereafter, when she and her sister met, it was by appointment in a strange place. Even these rare meetings, upon their being discovered, were prohibited, and thus Miser Farebrother succeeded in parting two sisters who loved each other devotedly. "Whatever Laura saw in that miserly bear," said Mrs. Lethbridge, indignantly, to her husband, "to marry him is a mystery I shall never be able to discover." But this mystery is of a nature common enough in the matrimonial market, and may be attributed to thousands of ill-assorted couples. It was plainly Miser Farebrother's intention to discourage Mrs. Lethbridge's visits to Parksides after the death of his wife; promises were in no sense sacred to him, even death-bed promises, unless their performance was necessary to his interests, and in this instance he very soon decided that it was not.