"I _do_ think so. Blair is young yet; and if she costs him something, he may value her--and I think I can manage to make her cost him something! A man doesn't value what comes cheap; and all his life everything has come cheap to Blair." "I don't see what you're driving at." "Just this," she explained; "Blair has had everything he wanted,--oh, yes, yes; it's my fault!" she struck an impatient fist upon the arm of her chair. "I told you it was my fault. Don't take precious time to argue over that. It is _all_ my fault. There! will that satisfy you? I've given him everything. So he thought he could have everything. He doesn't know the meaning of 'no.' He has got to learn. I shall teach him. I have thought it all out. I'm going to make a man of him." "How?" said Robert Ferguson. "I haven't got the details clear in my mind yet, but this is the gist of it: _NO money but what he earns_." "No money?" "After this, it will be 'root, hog, or die.'" "But Blair can't root," her superintendent said, fair in spite of himself. And at that her face lighted with a sort of awful purpose. "Then he must die! Ferguson, don't you see--_he has begun to die already?_" Again her face quivered. "Look at this business of taking David's wife--oh, I know, they weren't married yet, but the principle is the same; what do you call that but dying? Look at his whole life: what has he done? Received--received! Given nothing. Ferguson, you can't fool God: you've got to give something! A privilege means an obligation--the obligation of sweat! Sweat of your body or your brains. Blair has never sweated. He's always had something for nothing. That is the one immorality that damns. It has damned Blair. Of course, I ought to have realized it before, but I--I suppose I was too busy. Yes; I tell you, if Blair had had to work for what he's got, as you and I have worked for what we've got, he wouldn't be where he is to-day. You know that! He'd have had something else to think of than satisfying his eyes, or his stomach, or his lust. He'd have been decent." "He might have been," Robert Ferguson said drearily, "but I doubt it. Anyway, you can't, by making him earn or go without, or anything else, give David's girl back to him." "No," she said heavily, and for a moment her passion of hope flagged; "no, I can't do that. But I shall try to make it up to David in some way, of course. Where is he?" she broke off. He told her briefly of David's arrival and departure. "He's gone back to his mother," he ended; "she'll comfort him." Then, with a bark of anger, he added, "Mrs. Richie was always saying that Elizabeth would turn out well. I wonder what she will say now? I knew better; her mother, my brother Arthur's wife, was--no good. Yet I let Mrs. Richie bamboozle me into building on her. I always said Life shouldn't play the same trick on me twice--but it has done it! It has done it. My heart was set on Elizabeth. Yes, Mrs. Maitland, I've been fooled again--but so have you."