"Better shut that door," she said briefly; and he gave the door in the glass partition a shove with his foot. Then they looked at each other. "Well," she said; and stretched out her hand. "We're in the same box. I guess we'd better shake hands." She grinned with pain, but she forced her grunt of a laugh. "What's your story? Mine is only his explanation to Nannie."
"Mine isn't even that. She merely wrote me she had married him; that was all. Miss White told me what he wrote to Nannie. What do you know about it?"
"That's all I know," she said, and gave him Blair's note.
He read it, and handed it back in silence.
"Well, what are you going to do?" she asked.
"Do? There's nothing to do. I'm done with her!"
"He's my son," Sarah Maitland said. "I have got to do something."
"But there's nothing to be done," he pointed out; it was not like this ruthless woman to waste time crying over spilt milk. "They are both of age, and they are married; that's all there is to it. I went into the mayor's office and found the registry. The marriage is all right so far as that goes. As for David—men don't go out with a gun or a horsewhip in these fine times. He won't do anything. For that matter, he is well rid of her. I told him so. I might have added that the best thing a jilted man can do is to go down on his knees and thank God that he's been jilted; I know what I'm talking about! As for your son—" he stopped.
"Yes," she said, "my son?" And even in his fury, Robert Ferguson felt a pang at the sight of her torn and ravaged face that quivered so that he turned his eyes away out of sheer decency. "I must do something for my son. And I think I know what it will be." She bit her forefinger, frowning with thought. "I think I know … I have not done right by Blair."
"No, you haven't," he said dryly. "Have you just discovered that? But I don't see what you or I or God Almighty can do now! They're married."