Chapter 5

All through the years she and her mother had been the rigid economists. The little mother who, in her girlhood, had never lifted a hand to domestic duties, had learned to manage with one clumsy maid. Virginia had learned to cook, to set the table, to dust the old mahogany, to polish the silver. The two women, daughters of a long line of leisurely beauties, who had flirted in the old garden, and danced at the Governors’ balls, and entertained and dined distinguished visitors to the old town, who had worn brocades br…