old woman in the basement breakfast-room of the decayed Belgravian house.
"If you had not found such a good husband, my dear," she used to say to
her daughter, "I don't know what would have become of that poor boy."

Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not
particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat; and this
recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially of the same
quality. Both women admitted to themselves that not much more could be
reasonably expected. It was enough to earn for Mr Verloc the old woman's
reverential gratitude. In the early days, made sceptical by the trials
of friendless life, she used sometimes to ask anxiously: "You don't
think, my dear, that Mr Verloc is getting tired of seeing Stevie about?"
To this Winnie replied habitually by a slight toss of her head. Once,
however, she retorted, with a rather grim pertness: "He'll have to get
tired of me first." A long silence ensued. The mother, with her feet
propped up on a stool, seemed to be trying to get to the bottom of that
answer, whose feminine profundity had struck her all of a heap. She had
never really understood why Winnie had married Mr Verloc. It was very
sensible of her, and evidently had turned out for the best, but her girl
might have naturally hoped to find somebody of a more suitable age. There
had been a steady young fellow, only son of a butcher in the next street,
helping his father in business, with whom Winnie had been walking out
with obvious gusto. He was dependent on his father, it is true; but the
business was good, and his prospects excellent. He took her girl to the
theatre on several evenings. Then just as she began to dread to hear of
their engagement (for what could she have done with that big house alone,
with Stevie on her hands), that romance came to an abrupt end, and Winnie
went about looking very dull. But Mr Verloc, turning up providentially
to occupy the first-floor front bedroom, there had been no more question
of the young butcher. It was clearly providential.