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with the spirit of New York. Resourcefulness and a powerful will –
for his threats in weaker hands would have been less than nothing -
had beaten the gathering dust from his uncle's name, from the name
of his family, from even this shivering figure that sat beside him in
the car.
Gary Sloane's body was found next morning on the lower shelf
of a pillar of Queensboro Bridge. In the darkness and in his
excitement he had thought that it was the water flowing black beneath
him, but in less than a second it made no possible difference – unless
he had planned to think one last thought of Edna, and call out her
name as he struggled feebly in the water.
VII
Anson never blamed himself for his part in this affair - the
situation which brought it about had not been of his making. But the
just suffer with the unjust, and he found that his oldest and somehow
his most precious friendship was over. He never knew what distorted
story Edna told, but he was welcome in his uncle's house no longer.
Just before Christmas Mrs. Hunter retired to a select Episcopal
heaven, and Anson became the responsible head of his family. An
unmarried aunt who had lived with them for years ran the house, and
attempted with helpless inefficiency to chaperone the younger girls.
All the children were less self-reliant than Anson, more conventional
both in their virtues and in their shortcomings. Mrs. Hunter's death
had postponed the debut of one daughter and the wedding of another.
Also it had taken something deeply material from all of them, for
with her passing the quiet, expensive superiority of the Hunters came
to an end.
For one thing, the estate, considerably diminished by two
inheritance taxes and soon to be divided among six children, was not
a notable fortune any more. Anson saw a tendency in his youngest
sisters to speak rather respectfully of families that hadn't "existed"
twenty years ago. His own feeling of precedence was not echoed in
them – sometimes they were conventionally snobbish, that was all.
For another thing, this was the last summer they would spend on the
Connecticut estate; the clamor against it was too loud: "Who wants to
waste the best months of the year shut up in that dead old town?"
Reluctantly he yielded – the house would go into the market in the
fall, and next summer they would rent a smaller place in Westchester