"You know best," he said, smiling. "I am sure it will be all right. But I sha'n't let her come unless you are better." He went on reading till it grew late, and it seemed to him she was dropping off to sleep. He was stealing off by way of the large dressing-room near by, where he had been installed since their return, when, she said faintly, "Good-night!" He returned, and felt the drawing of her hot hand. He stooped and kissed her. Then she turned away from him, and seemed to go instantly to sleep. He went downstairs to his library, and gathered about him some documents he had brought back from the last meeting of the masters' committee, which had to be read. But in reality he spent an hour of random thought. When would she herself tell him anything of her relations to Lady Maxwell, of the nature and causes of that strange subjection which, as he saw quite plainly, had been brought about? She must know that he pined to know; yet she held her secret only the more jealously, no doubt to punish him. He thought of her visits to the village, half humorously, half sadly; then of her speech about the Blue Room and his mother. They seemed to him signs of some influence at work. But at last he turned back to his papers with a long impatient sigh. The clear pessimism with which he was wont to see facts that concerned himself maintained that all the surrounding circumstance of the case was as untoward as it could be--this dull house, a troubled district, his money affairs, the perpetual burden of his mother, Letty's own thirst for pleasure, and the dying down in himself of the feelings that might once--possibly--have made up to her for a good deal. The feelings might be simulated. Was the woman likely to be deceived? That she was capable of the fiercest jealousy had been made abundantly plain; and such a temper once roused would find a hundred new provocations, day by day, in the acts and doings of a husband who had ceased to be a lover. Two days later Lady Tressady arrived, with Justine, and her dogs, and all her paraphernalia. She declared herself better, but she was a mere shadow of the woman who had tormented George with her debts and affectations at Malford House a twelvemonth before. She took Ferth discontentedly, as usual, and was particularly cross with Letty's assignment to her of the back room, instead of the larger spare room to the front of the house. "Damp?--nonsense!" she said to Justine, who was trying to soothe her on the night she arrived. "I suppose Lady Tressady has some friend of her own coming to stay--that's, of _course_, what it is. _C'est parfaitement clair, je te dis--parfaitement!_" The French maid reminded her that her daughter-in-law had said, on showing her the room, she had only to express a wish to change, and the arrangements should be altered at once. "I daresay," cried Lady Tressady. "But I shall ask _no_ favours of her--and that, of course, she knew." "But, miladi, I need only speak to the housemaid."