When she told him what her original plan had been he was so appalled, so
humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a servant's apron (to say
nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he almost warmed to the Abbotts.
II
Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of
spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of
something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves, received
a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand dollars and
asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where she kept her
savings.
"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper so
heavily freighted.
"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus whose
husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy and Anne
advises her."
"What did you sell? Your jewels?"
"Some. I never wear anything but the pearls anyhow; and it's bad taste to
wear jewels unless you're wealthy. I had some old lace that is hard to buy
now, and real lace isn't the fashion any more. New rich people always think
it's just the thing. I also sold her two of the biggest and clumsiest of
the Italian pieces. She is crazy about them. Anne told her that they were
as good as a passport."
Mortimer sprang to the only, the naive, the eternal masculine conclusion.
"You do love me still!" The dull eyes of his spirit flashed with the sudden
rejuvenation of his heavy body.
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