"I believe you would go back to him now!" he flung at her "Go back to him? I would go back to him on my hands and knees if he would take me." Words like that left him speechless with misery; and yet he was happy--she was his wife! When his bank account began to dwindle, he found it easy to borrow; the fact that he was the son of his mother (and consequently his bills had always been paid) was sufficient collateral. That he borrowed at a ruinous interest was a matter of indifference to a man who, having never earned a dollar, had not the slightest idea of the value of a dollar. At the end of the first year of his marriage, jewels for Elizabeth seemed less important to him than her bread and butter; and it was then that with real anxiety he tried to find something to do. Again "Sarah Maitland's son" found doors open to him which the ordinary man, inexperienced and notoriously idle, would have found closed; but none of them offered what he thought a sufficient salary; and by and by he realized that very soon he would be obliged, as he expressed it, "to sponge on Elizabeth"; for, reckless as he was, he knew that his borrowing capacity must come to an end. When the "sponging" finally began, he was acutely uncomfortable, which was certainly to his credit. At any rate, it proved that he was enough of a man to be miserable under such conditions. When a husband who is young and vigorous lives idly on his wife's money one of two things happens: he is miserable, or he degenerates into contentment. Blair was not degenerating--consequently he was honestly wretched. His attempts to find something to do were not without humor to his mother, who kept herself informed, of course, of all his "business" ventures. "What! he wants the Dalzells to take him on? What for? Errand-boy? That's all he's good for. But I'm afraid two dollars and a half a week won't buy him many china beetles!" When Blair essayed a broker's office she even made an ancient joke to her superintendent: "If Blair could buy himself for what he is worth to Haines, and sell himself for what he thinks he's worth, he might make a fair profit,--and pick up some more old masters."