There was something he always did to people when they first came here. He’d even come up with a few methods to do it, and he had used these methods for a couple of years now, but he had known that this time was a little different. Louise had seemed a little bit too content about having come here, and the Master hadn’t known how to deal with that as she didn’t want her to get ahead of herself, so he had come up with something different. He wasn’t going to treat her problem with violence, he was going to do it with neglect.
The next few days after her arrival, he didn’t do much that had anything to do with her. He hadn’t instructed anybody to explain what was going to happen to her and she hadn’t been assigned a job yet either. The Master knew that this must have been uncomfortable, but he wanted her to doubt her decision. He wanted her to be less sure of what she wanted so that she was going to be more likely to listen when he would finally give her some attention again. The longer he waited, the less sure she’d feel, the more appreciative of an actual task she was going to be.
All he had done was tell Trev to keep an eye on her, but not to intervene or help her when she was in need. She had to figure it out herself and come up with a plan, and Trev simply had to observe to see what that was. He was always near her, but never close enough for it to seem obvious. He simply watched her to see when she would either break down or come up with something to make her situation a little bit better.