One day, as George walked into Letty's sitting-room, to discuss some small business of the afternoon, he saw on her writing-table that same photograph of Lady Maxwell and her boy, whereof an earlier copy had come to such a tragic end in Letty's hands. He walked up to it with an exclamation; Letty was not in the room. Suddenly, however, she came in. He made no attempt whatever to disguise that he had been looking at the photograph; he bent over it indeed a moment longer, deliberately. Then, walking away to the window, he began speaking of the matter which had brought him to look for his wife. Letty answered absently. The colour had rushed to her face. Her hands fidgeted with the books and papers on her table, and her mind was full of fevered remembrance. Presently George, having settled the little point he came to speak of, fell silent. But he still stood by the window, looking out through the rain-splashed glass to the wintry valley below with its chimneys and straggling village. Letty, who was pretending to write a note, raised her head, looked at him--the quick breath beating through the parted lips, the blue eyes half wild, half miserable. She was not nearly so pretty as she had been a year before. George had often noticed it; it made part of his remorse. But the face was more troubling, infinitely more human; and, in truth, he knew it much better, was more sensitively alive to it, so to speak, than he ever had been in the days of their courtship. Before he left the room he came back to her, put his arm round her shoulders and kissed her hair. She did not raise her head or say anything. But when he had gone she looked up with a sudden fierce sob, took the photograph from its place, and thrust it angrily into the drawer in front of her. Afterwards she sat for some minutes, motionless, with her handkerchief at her lips, trying to choke down the tears that had seized her. And last of all, with trembling fingers, she took out the picture again, wrapped it in some soft tissue paper that lay near, as though propitiating it, and once more put it out of sight.