“That is a matter upon which I can not undertake to advise you,” replied Murray.
“Anyhow,” declared the woman defiantly, for Murray’s words and expression showed his disapprobation, “I want to serve notice on you that not one cent of the money is to be paid to any one else. It would be just like that nurse to try to get it.”
“You shall have every cent to which you are entitled,” replied Murray with frigid courtesy, “but nothing is to be gained by further discussion.”
“I suppose,” exclaimed the woman with sharp resentfulness, “that your sympathies are with that shameless nurse.”
“I don’t know,” returned Murray quietly. “I’m not at all sure that your husband was not the one who was most entitled to sympathy.”
It was unlike Murray to speak thus brutally, but the woman irritated him. Many were the examples of selfishness that had come to his notice, but this seemed to him a little worse than any of the others. That she had been living apart from her husband might be due to no fault of hers, but she impressed him as being a vain, vindictive, mercenary woman, with no thought above the rather gaudy clothes she wore—just the kind to demand everything and give nothing. Certainly her actions showed that she lacked all the finer sensibilities that one naturally associates with true women. No matter what might lie back of it all, common decency should have prevented her from making such a display of her own small soul at such a time. At least, so Murray thought.
“She is the kind of woman who marries a man’s bank account,” he mused, “and considers the inability to supply her with all the money she wants as the first evidence of incompatibility of temper. Some women think they want a husband when they really only want an accommodating banker.”
Murray was still musing in this strain when the second woman called. Unlike the first, this woman gave some evidence of grief and mourning: her eyes showed that she had been weeping, and her attire, although not the regulation mourning, was as near to it as a scanty wardrobe would permit on short notice. But she was self-possessed, and spoke with patient resignation.
“Necessity,” she explained, “has compelled me to come to see you at this time about Albert Vincent’s life insurance policy.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Murray thoughtlessly, “you are the nurse!”