David's mother had no rebuke for him; she looked at him with pitying eyes; he was so very unhappy in his child's unhappiness! She herself was doing all she could for the "child"; she was in Mercer most of that winter. "No, I won't hire the house," she told the persistent landlord; "I can't afford it; I'm only here for a few days at a time. No, you _sha'n't_ lower the rent! Robert, Robert, what shall I do to keep you from being so foolish? I wouldn't live there if you gave me the house! I want to stay at the hotel and be near Elizabeth." In her frequent visits in those next few months she grew very near to Elizabeth; it was a wonderfully tender relation, full of humility on both sides. "I never knew how good you were, Mrs. Richie," Elizabeth said. "I never really understood you, dear child," Helena Richie confessed. She drew near Blair, too; she knew how he had borne the story Elizabeth told him when she came back to Mercer; she knew the recoil of anger and jealousy, then the reaction of cringing acceptance of the fact; she knew his passionate efforts, as the winter passed, to buy his way into his wife's friendship by doing everything he fancied might please her. She knew why he asked Mr. Ferguson to find a place for him in the Works, and why he induced Nannie to take the money he believed to be his, and build a hospital. "He is going to use the old house for it," Mrs. Richie told Mr. Ferguson; "well! it's one way of getting Nannie out of it, though I'm afraid he'll have to turn the workmen in and rebuild over her head before he can move her." "It's the bait in the trap," Robert Ferguson said, contemptuously. "Well, suppose it is? Can you blame him for trying to win her?" "He'll never succeed. If he was half-way honest he would have offered to let her go in the first place. If he expects any story-book business of 'duty creating love' he'll come out the small end of the horn." "I suppose he hopes," she admitted. But she sighed. She knew those hopes would never be realized, and she felt the pain of that poor, selfish, passionate heart until her own ached. Yes, of course he ought to 'offer to let her go.' She knew that as well as Elizabeth's uncle himself. "And he will," she said to herself. Then her face was softly illuminated by the lambent flame of some inner serenity: "But she won't go!" Those were the days when Blair would not recognize his opportunity. It was not because it was not pointed out to him. "I'm certain that a divorce could be fixed up some way," Robert Ferguson said once, "and I hinted as much to him. I told him she couldn't endure the sight of him." "Do you call that a hint?" "Well, he didn't take it, anyway. Of course, if nothing moves him, I suppose I can shoot him?" She smiled. "You won't have to shoot him. He is very unhappy. Wait."