“Why?”
“I realize now,” she said, “that, in the first place, the man was married; in the second place, he was wealthy. He was trying to protect himself from an unpleasant wife on the one hand, and avaricious gold-diggers or blackmailers on the other.”
“And apparently, somewhere in the process, he messed up your life pretty well,” Mason said sympathetically.
She turned on him, not in anger, but with quick resentment. “That,” she said, “shows that you didn’t know George... Mr. Sabin.”
“It’s a fact, isn’t it?” Mason asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what the complete explanation is,” she said, “but you can rest assured that when all the facts are uncovered, his reasons will have been good ones.”
“And you feel no bitterness?” the lawyer inquired.
“None whatever,” she said, and for a moment there was a wistful note in her voice. “The happiest two months of my life were in the period following my meeting with Mr. Sabin. All of this tragedy has hit me a terrific blow... However, you’re not interested in my grief.”
“I’m trying to understand,” he said gently.
“That’s virtually all there is to it,” she said; “I had some money which I’d saved from my salary. I recognized, of course, that it was hopeless for a man in the late fifties, who had no particular skill in any profession, and no regular trade, to get employment. I told him that I would back him in starting a grocery store in San Molinas. He looked the town over, but finally came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be possible to make a go of things there. So then I told him to pick his place.”