If in the first chapter Ken Follet exposed the reality of poverty and naiveness through Billi`s eyes, and even more, a dose of villainy and nastiness in the Price (the miner who left Billy alone for hours in the darkness) actions against Billy, it is in Chapter II that the inequalities become more highlighted.

At the beginning of the chapter, the author starts showing us who Fitz is: a wealthy nobleman that basically is an official military that has never done anything for deserver his title, because he had privileged access to this position from his nobility, and at the same time, he is a rich man for having inherited everything for his father. Even so, he is arrogant and considers himself as someone who has the destiny to keep the country as it has always been.

Another vital aspect is Bea, his wife. She is a Russian princess, and the way how the author opposes both in the same scene demonstrates how they are different sides of the same coin! Both are noble, but while Fitz attempt to fit his conservatism under a varnish of civilization, adapting his actions to the social conventions, Bea is the most precise expression of Russian brutality that gets clear when she hits her maid, justifying it as a way to educate her.

In a certain way, all this scena is a way to counter and mark with this counter position, the abysm of the distance between Fitz and his world and Billy and his pit (mine) in the same little city of Aberowen in South Walles.