The week before Whitsuntide happened to be one of special annoyance for Tressady. His reports from Ferth were steadily more discouraging; his attempts to sell his land made no way; and he saw plainly that, if he was to keep their London life going, to provide for Shapetsky's claims, and to give Letty what she wanted for renovations at Ferth, he would have to sell some of the very small list of good securities left him by his father. Most young men in his place, perhaps, would have taken such a thing with indifference; he brooded over it. "I am beginning to spend my capital as income," he said to himself. "The strike will be on in July; next half-year I shall get almost nothing from the pits; rents won't come to much; Letty wants all kinds of things. How long will it be before I, too, am in debt, like my mother, borrowing from this person and that?" Then he would make stern resolutions of economy, only to be baffled by Letty's determination to have everything that other people had; above all, not to allow her own life to be stinted because he had so foolishly adopted his mother's debts. She said little; or said it with smiles and a bridal standing on her rights not to be answered. But her persistence in a particular kind of claim, and her new refusal to be taken into his confidence and made the partner of his anxieties, raised a miserable feeling in his mind as the weeks went on. "No!" she said to herself, all the time resenting bitterly what had happened at Ferth; "if I let him talk to me about it, I shall be giving in, and letting _her_ trample on me! If George will be so weak, he must find the money somehow. Of course he can! I am not in the _least_ extravagant. I am only doing what everybody expects me to do." Meanwhile this state of things did not make Lady Tressady any more welcome in Brook Street, and there were symptoms of grievances and quarrels of another sort. Lady Tressady heard that the young couple had already given one or two tiny dinner-parties, and to none of them had she been invited. One day that George had been obliged to go to Warwick Square to consult her on business, he was suddenly overwhelmed with reproaches on this point. "I suppose Letty thinks I should spoil her parties! She is ashamed of me, perhaps"--Lady Tressady gave an angry laugh. "Oh! very well; but I should like you and her to understand, George, that I have been a good deal more admired in my time than ever Letty need expect to be!" And George's mother, in a surprising yellow tea-gown, threw herself back on her chair, bridling with wrath and emotion. George declared, with good temper, that he and Letty were well aware of his mother's triumphs; whereupon Lady Tressady, becoming tearful, said she knew it wasn't a pretty thing to say--of course it wasn't--but if one was treated unkindly by one's only son and his wife, what could one do but assert oneself?