"George, what _are_ we to do with that place? It gives me a nightmare. The extraordinary thing is the way that everything in it has gone to ruin. Did your mother really live here while you were away?" George's expression darkened. "I always used to suppose she was here," he said. "That was our bargain. But I begin to believe now that she was mostly in London. One can't wonder at it--she always hated the place." "Of course she was in London!" thought Letty to herself, "spending piles of money, running shamefully into debt, and letting the house go to pieces. Why, the linen hasn't been darned for years!" Aloud she said: "Mrs. Matthews says a charwoman and a little girl from the village used to be left alone in the house for months, to play any sort of games, with nobody to look after them--_nobody_--while you were away!" George looked at his wife--and then would only slip his arm round her for answer. "Darling! you don't know how I've been worried all the morning--don't let's make worry at home. After all it _is_ rather nice to be here together, isn't it?--and we shall do--we sha'n't starve! Perhaps we shall pull through with the pits after all--it is difficult to believe the men will make such fools of themselves--and--well! you know my angel mother can't always be swooping upon us as she has done lately. Let's just be patient a little--very likely I can sell a few bits of land before long that will give us some money in hand--and then this small person shall bedizen herself and the house as much as she pleases. And meanwhile, _madame ma femme_, let me point out to you that your George never professed to be anything but a very bad match for you!" Letty remembered all his facts and figures perfectly. Only somehow she had regarded them with the optimism natural to a girl who is determined to be married. She had promptly forgotten the adverse chances he had insisted upon, and she had converted all his averages into minima. No, she could not say she had not been warned; but nevertheless the result promised to be quite different from what she had expected. However, with her husband's arm round her, it was not easy to maintain her ill-humour, and she yielded. They wandered on into the wood which fringed the hill on its further side, she coquetting, he courting and flattering her in a hundred ways. Her soft new dress, her dainty lightness and freshness, made harmony in his senses with the April day, the building rooks, the breaths of sudden perfume from field and wood, the delicate green that was creeping over the copses, softening all the edges of the black scars left by the pits. The bridal illusion returned. George eagerly--hungrily--gave himself up to it. And Letty, though conscious all the while of a restless feeling at the back of her mind that they were losing time, must needs submit. However, when the luncheon gong had sounded and they were strolling back to the house, he bethought himself, knit his brows again, and said to her: