The topmost storey Buncombe assigned to relatives of his own--a middle-aged woman, Mrs.Handover, with a sickly grownup son, who took some part in the truss business.
For a few weeks Rolfe was waited upon by a charwoman, whom he paid extravagantly for a maximum of dirt and discomfort; then the unsatisfactory person fell ill, and, whilst cursing his difficulties, Harvey was surprised by a visit from Mrs.Handover, who made an unexpected suggestion--would Mr.Rolfe accept her services in lieu of the charwoman's, paying her whatever he had been accustomed to give?
The proposal startled him.

Mrs.Handover seemed to belong pretty much to his own rank of life; he was appalled at the thought of bidding her scrub floors and wash plates; and indeed it had begun to dawn upon him that, for a man with more than nine hundred a year, he was living in a needlessly uncomfortable way.

On his reply that he thought of removing, Mrs.Handover fell into profound depression, and began to disclose her history.

Very early in life she had married a man much beneath her in station, with the natural result.

After some years of quarrelling, which culminated in personal violence on her husband's part, she obtained a judicial separation.