"
_In cash!_
Had Nita, by any chance, been telling a near-truth? Had she been
blackmailing her own husband--a husband who had dared marry again,
believing his deserted wife to be dead--and justifying herself by
calling it "back alimony?"
But--wasn't it, in reality, no matter what coercion Nita had used in
getting the money, exactly that?... _Back alimony! And the price of her
silence before the world and the wife who was not really a wife...._
In a new light, Bonnie Dundee studied the character of the woman who had
been murdered--possibly to make her silence eternal.
Lois Dunlap had liked, even loved her. The other women and girls of "the
crowd"--that exclusive, self-centered clique of Hamilton's most socially
prominent women--must have liked her fairly well and found her
congenial, in spite of their jealousy of her popularity with the men of
the crowd, or they would not have tolerated her, regardless of Lois
Dunlap's championship of her protegee.
Gladys Earle had found her "the sweetest, kindest, most generous person
I ever met"--Gladys Earle, who envied and hated all girls who were more
fortunate than she.
Serena Hart, former member of New York's Junior League and still listed
in the Social Register, had found her the only congenial member of the
chorus she had invaded as the first step toward stardom.
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