* * * * * In the afternoon Letty was languid and depressed. She would not talk on general topics, and George shrank in nervous disgust from reopening the subjects of the morning. Finally, she chose to be tucked up on the sofa with a novel, and gave George free leave to go out. It surprised him to find as he walked quickly down the hill, delighting in the April sun, that he was glad to be alone. But he did not in the least try to fling the thought away from him, as many a lover would have done. The events, the feelings of the day, had been alike jarring and hateful; he meant to escape from them. But he could not escape from them all at once. A fresh and unexpected debt of somewhere about four thousand pounds does not sit lightly on a comparatively poor man. In spite of his philosophy for Letty's benefit, he must needs harass himself anew about his money affairs, planning and reckoning. How many more such surprises would his mother spring upon him--and how was he to control her? He realised now something of the life-long burden his dull old father had borne--a burden which the absences of school, college, and travel had hitherto spared himself. What was he to appeal to in her? There seemed to be nothing--neither will nor conscience. She was like the women without backs in the fairy-tale. Then, with one breath he said to himself that he must kick out that singer-fellow, and with the next, that he would not touch any of his mother's crew with a barge-pole. Though he never pleaded ideals in public, he had been all his life something of a moral epicure, taking "moral" as relating rather to manners than to deeper things. He had done his best not to soil himself by contact with certain types--among men especially. Of women he was less critical and less observant. As to this ugly feud opening between his mother and his wife, it had quite ceased to amuse him. Now that his marriage was a reality, the daily corrosion of such a thing was becoming plain. And who was there in the world to bear the brunt of it but he? He saw himself between the two--eternally trying to make peace--and his face lengthened. And if Letty would only leave the thing to him!--would only keep her little white self out of it! He wished he could get her to send away that woman Grier--a forward second-rate creature, much too ready to meddle in what did not concern her. Then, with a shake of his thin shoulders, he passionately drove it all out of his thoughts. Let him go to the village, sound the feeling there if he could, and do his employer's business. His troubles as a pit-owner seemed likely to be bad enough, but they did not canker one like domestic miseries. They were a man's natural affairs; to think of them came as a relief to him. * * * * * He had but a disappointing round, however.