"Well, your father's step-sister."
All hope of better acquaintance with her was dashed by learning that she had opposed our father's marriage, opposed it bitterly.
"She couldn't have known you," Bettina said.
"That I was not known to her was crime enough," my mother answered with unwonted bitterness.
Just as we were made to feel that questions about Aunt Josephine were troubling, I felt now that to inquire into our precise financial condition was to harass and depress my mother. The condition was bad. Therefore it was best covered up.
"We shall manage," she said.
I was sixteen when this thunder-bolt descended, and, by that time, I knew that "to manage" was just what my mother, at all events, was quite incapable of doing. We still kept three servants and no accounts. Lawyers' letters were put away. Out of sight, they seemed to be out of mind. Out of my mother's mind.
I thought constantly about these things.
One day, months later, I blurted out a hope that we should all die together. My mother was horrified.
"But if we don't," I said, "how are we going to live—Bettina and I, without the pension?"