Nothing of this money was spent on her house
or dress; those remained, except for the great soft sofa, austere. It
was the poor who profited. Their very boots were stout with sins. But
how difficult it had been. Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance,
prayed about it to exhaustion. Ought she perhaps to refuse to touch
the money, to avoid it as she would have avoided the sins which were
its source? But then what about the parish's boots? She asked the
vicar what he thought, and through much delicate language, evasive and
cautious, it did finally appear that he was for the boots.
At least she had persuaded Frederick, when first he began his
terrible successful career--he only began it after their marriage; when
she married him he had been a blameless official attached to the
library of the British Museum--to publish the memoirs under another
name, so that she was not publicly branded. Hampstead read the books
with glee, and had no idea that their writer lived in its midst.
Frederick was almost unknown, even by sight, in Hampstead. He never
went to any of its gatherings. Whatever it was he did in the way of
recreation was done in London, but he never spoke of what he did or
whom he saw; he might have been perfectly friendless for any mention he
ever made of friends to his wife.
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