"Aye, I knew yo'd be sorry--an yor wife--" She turned feebly towards Letty, trying with her blurred and tear-dimmed sight to make out what Sir George's bride might be like. She looked for a moment at the small, elegant person in the corner,--at the sheaf of nodding rosebuds on the hat--the bracelets--the pink cheeks under the dainty veil,--looked with a curious aloofness, as though from a great distance. Then, evidently, another thought struck her like a lash. She ceased to see or think of Letty. Her grip tightened on George's arm. "An I'm allus thinkin," she said, with a passionate sob, "of that what he said about the drink. He'd allus bin a sober lad, till this lasst winter it did seem as though he cudna keep hiself from it--it kep creepin on im--an several times lately he'd broke out very bad, pay-days--an he knew I'd been frettin. And who was ter blame--I ast yo, or onybody--who was it ter blame?" Her voice rose to a kind of cry. "His feyther died ov it, and his grandfeyther afore that. His grandfeyther wor found dead i the roadside, after they'd made him blind-drunk at owd Morse's public-house, where the butty wor reckonin with im an his mates. But he'd never ha gone near the drink if they'd hadn't druv him to't, for he wasn't inclined that way. But the butty as gave him work kep the public, an if yer didn't drink, yer didn't get no work. You must drink yoursel sick o Saturdays, or theer'd be no work for you o Mondays. 'Noa, yer can sit at ome,' they'd say to un, 'ef yer so damned pertickler.' I ast yor pardon, sir, for the bad word, but that's ow they'd say it. I've often heerd owd John say as he'd a been glad to ha given the butty back a shillin ov is pay to be let off the drink. An Willum, that's my usband, he wor allus at it too--an the doctor towd me one day, as Willum lay a-dyin, as it ran in the blood--an Jamie heard im--I know he did--for I fouu im on the stairs--listenin." She paused again, lost in a mist of incoherent memories, the tears falling slowly. After a minute's silence, George said--not indeed knowing what to say--"We're _very_ sorry for you, Mary--my wife and I--we wish we could do anything to help you. I am afraid it can't make any difference to you--I expect it makes it all the worse--to think that accidents are so much fewer--that so much has been done. And yet times are mended, aren't they?" Mary made no answer. George sat looking at her, conscious, as he seldom was, of raw youth and unreadiness--conscious, too, of Letty's presence in a strange, hindering way--as of something that both blunted emotion and made one rather ashamed to show it. He could only pursue the lame topic of improvement, of changed times. The disappearance of old abuses, of "butties" and "tommy-shops"; the greater care for life; the accident laws; the inspectors. He found himself growing eloquent at last, yet all the time regarding himself, as it were, from a distance--ironically.