Thus, for example, there was the matter of divorce. Dan learned that the kindly woman into whose house he had brought Lou suffered from nostalgia. She had come out into the West with an eager, improvident husband, who had died and left her with this tiny home, on which the mortgage of a few hundreds rested as a burden beyond her strength to remove. She was sick with longing to go back among the home-folk. Dan's sympathetic voice and candid, honest eyes won confidence from the lonely old woman. And, too, she quickly grew fond of the invalid in her house. Therefore, she had no hesitation in acceding to the proposal made to her by Dan McGrew: that she should travel to the East with Lou, as nurse and companion. The money offered to her by Dan McGrew for these services was enough to ease her declining years. Moreover, there was the added inducement that, in this manner, she would be able to return to the place for which she longed.
Lou made no objection to the arrangement. She liked the old woman, and the instinct of flight was still upon her.... She was only grateful to the man who was at such pains in her behalf.
In due time, the three were duly established in the East. Dangerous Dan, in the course of his daily visits to Lou from a lodging he had taken close at hand, guided her thoughts so craftily that, with no suspicion of having been influenced, the heart-broken woman decided that she should get a divorce. Dan had chosen a location in a State where desertion was a sufficient cause. Lou brought suit, and the issue was expedited in the courts. She believed that thus she gave to her husband an opportunity to marry the woman with whom he had become infatuated, and thus, too, an opportunity to restore in some degree his self-respect.... She could not guess that, owing to the treachery of the man on whose advice she relied, her husband had no knowledge whatsoever of these proceedings. The newspapers, with their formal advertisements to the defendant in the action instituted in the courts, were never posted to the address of the ranch-owner.... Dan McGrew saw to that.
Eventually, there came a decree _nisi_. In due time, the divorce was made absolute. Throughout this interval of delay, the man demonstrated the firmness of his purpose by the patience with which he waited for the attainment of his ends.