As the sad business came to its inevitable conclusion, Colonel Fitzwilliam had ample leisure, imposed by the necessity of his remaining near his father, to observe the close and steady friendship that existed between Lord and Lady Hallendale. He could not but be conscious of the double blessing in his father’s choice of such a wife: she not only soothed his fears, supported his spirits, and encouraged his hope, but directed the servants, met the visitors (oh, could they but be spared from the condolences of the curious and the fraudulent civilities of the uninvolved!), saw to their daily needs and comforts, responded to the most pressing of the correspondence, and a thousand other details, large and small. Without such careful attention, the confusion and anguish of those first weeks must have been infinitely worse. Colonel Fitzwilliam watched her as if in a dream, aware that he had never fully appreciated the manifold trivialities and unending stream of importunate matters of business that comprised the substance of her days. He saw also, with fresh pain, the helplessness of his father in the present calamity. His father had never heeded the present, and in his thorough preoccupation with his own studies, had failed to enact any scheme to secure his estate for his heirs. Although he inherited an estate dreadfully encumbered, he had done nothing himself to secure it from ruin; that credit must be owing entirely to his wife. The simple fact was that the Hallendale estates were more valuable than was generally believed—much more valuable. Colonel Fitzwilliam—now Viscount Dunfield—had the clarity of mind to comprehend that, had the efforts of his step-mother been more generally known, his brother’s life might have been spared, only to the certain destruction of the entirety of the Hallendale estates, beyond even Lady Hallendale’s abilities for its recovery. He was thankful—beyond thankful—that the wisdom of Providence had spared his father such an analysis, and had further put the decision between two such wretched alternatives beyond the power of any mortal.