To that end he had, at first, put himself and his private funds at Jude's disposal. He had had hopes that by so doing he might help Jude to decent manliness. But that hope soon died. Jude, lazy with the inertness of a too sharply defined ancestry, became rapidly a well-developed parasite. Even when he accepted the contract to build Ralph Drew's house, he had done so from two motives. By this means he could, he found, command more of Gaston's money than in any other way, and by assuming the responsibility he placed himself on a social pinnacle that satisfied his vanity. He became a man of importance. Gaston and Filmer, glad with the intelligence of men who know the value of work, took the actual burden upon themselves. Lauzoon had the empty glory; they had the blessing of toil that brought their faculties into play, and gave them relief from somberer thoughts. But Gaston was too normal a man not to consider the gravity of conditions that were developing. His hopes of Jude had long ago sunk into a contemptuous understanding of the shiftless fellow. He had, however, believed that the hold he had upon him insured a comparatively easy life for Joyce. This, too, he now saw was a false belief. He knew the girl. He knew that mere housing and assured food were little to her, if deeper things failed. It was this essentially spiritual side of Joyce that had interested him and appealed to him from the beginning. One by one he gave up his hopes for her happiness. He saw that Jude was impossible long before Joyce did; then he put his faith in the little child--and now that had failed! Poor girl! he thought; and in the inner chamber of his shack with the doors and shutters barred, the pistol lying at hand upon his desk, he cursed himself for a fool who had tried to enrich his own wasted life with an interest in the lives of others that had brought about as bad a state of affairs as any meddler could well conceive. Then he grew reckless. Things couldn't be much worse, anyway, and if he might brighten that dull life in the little house, he'd brighten it and Jude be--the laugh that Gaston laughed was perhaps better than the word he might have used had he finished his sentence. There was the regular income from the outer world; as long as that was at Gaston's command he felt he could control Lauzoon, and who else mattered, except Filmer? Well, Filmer had sense to keep his opinions to himself--although the look in his eyes when he disapproved of anything, was unpleasant and--impertinent. A clam like Filmer had no right to personal opinions of other folks' conduct. Unless he let light in upon his own excuse for being, he should withhold condemnation. So Gaston spent his days' ends on Jude's little piazza, or in the bay window of the sitting room when the air was too cool for the baby snuggling against the young mother's breast.