For years she had been
the richest woman in Middleborough, the head of everything
charitable and religious, the mainstay of ministers, the court of
final appeal in the case of sinners and backsliders. Now, in a
moment, through no fault of her own, the whole fabric of her life
had crumbled. Again had the mighty fallen.
She had not a spark of pity for her husband. To owe what you could
not pay was to her the height of dishonour. It was theft, and she
had no compunction in giving it the name, however it might be
disguised or palliated. She could see no mitigating circumstances
in Raymond's disgrace, and the fact that she was innocently
involved in his downfall filled her with exasperation. The big old
corner house was her own. She had been born in it. It had been her
marriage portion from her father. She put it straightway under the
hammer; her canal stock with it; her furniture and linen; a row of
five little cottages on the outskirts of the town where five poor
families had found not only that their bodies, but the welfare of
their souls, had been confided to her grim keeping. She stripped
herself of everything, and when all had been made over to the
creditors there still remained a deficit of seventeen hundred
dollars. This debt which was not a debt, for she was under no
legal compulsion to pay a penny of it, would willingly have been
condoned by men already grateful for her generosity; but she would
hear of no such compromise, not even that her notes be free of
interest, and she gave them at five per cent, resolute that in
time she would redeem them to the uttermost farthing.
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