It was demoralizing. She hated
herself as much as she hated him. Moreover there would have been some
compensation in sending an outsider to San Quentin.
And there was the serious problem of readjusting her life. Two thousand
dollars out of a small income was a serious deficit. Simultaneously she was
visited by another horrid thought. Mortimer had heretofore paid half the
household expenses. No doubt he was no longer in a position to pay any.
They would have to live, keep up Ballinger House, dress, pay taxes,
subscribe to charities, maintain their position in society, pay the doctor
and the dentist...a hundred and one other incidentals...out of four
thousand dollars a year. Well, it couldn't be done. They would have to
change their mode of living.
However, that concerned her little at present. The ordeal loomed of a plain
talk with Mortimer. It was impossible to ignore the theft even had she
wished; which she did not, for it was her disposition to have things out
and over with. But it would be horrible...horribly intimate. She had always
deliberately lived on the surface with her family and friends, respected
their privacies as she held hers inviolate. As her mind flashed back over
her life she realized that this would be the first really serious personal
talk she would ever have held with any one. Or, if her family, and
occasionally, Mortimer, had insisted upon being serious she had maintained
her own attitude of airy humor or delicate insolence.
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