Astra Read Online Free PDF Page A

the fur coat and the evening dresses. In fact, Clytie had borrowed the fur coat and several of the evening dresses to take to California with her.
    Before he left her, her father had said, “Of course, your natural home after I am gone would be with your mother’s niece Miriam, I suppose, if she is still living and wants you. But I have never quite trusted her husband Marmaduke’s judgment in financial matters, and that is why I am explaining your financial affairs to you carefully, even though you are so young and the days when you will come into your property are so comparatively far away. Of course, Cousin Duke may be all right. I haven’t known him long, you know, but I have an instinctive distrust of his business methods and his standards of right and wrong, so I want you to be able to handle your own affairs yourself, with advice from Mr. Sargent, who will be in charge of your affairs and be a real guardian to you. I don’t want you to have to be dependent upon Duke’s advice or assistance in any way. I think you will always find Mr. Sargent ready to help.
    “Also I have made ample provision that you may be able to pay a reasonable sum for your board wherever you stay after I am gone.”
    The time had come all too soon, and, almost in a daze, she had let Miriam and Duke take her back with them to their home.
    As she thought over these things, her father’s words, which had been almost forgotten, seemed clearly voiced in her ears again. She began to feel that she had been very wrong and careless to let her affairs go in such a slipshod manner since going to live with her cousins. She had spent far too much on showy apparel that she seldom used. Cousin Duke had been kind, of course, and she had almost come to feel that if her father were here now he would change his ideas about him. He had been almost more kind and helpful to her than her cousin Miriam. Yet now she realized that he had been the one who had encouraged Miriam to buy expensive garments, to join clubs and dress in a showy way, and on several occasions he had told Astra that as she lived with them, she must dress accordingly. He didn’t want people to think she had to scrimp in her wardrobe. He said it wouldn’t be good for his business to have people think that.
    There was another thing that had greatly troubled Astra, and that had been the constant differences of opinion between herself and her young cousin Clytie, which also brought on differences of opinion between herself and Miriam.
    Clytie Lester was three years younger than Astra, but old for her years and badly spoiled. Whatever she had wanted all her life had been given her by her parents if they could possibly manage it, and she had wanted a great many things. When it was not possible for her parents to get what she wanted, Clytie had ways of getting things for herself, and one of those ways of late had been to borrow money of Astra.
    As time went on, a good many of things Clytie wanted were not things that Astra considered right, and therefore Astra’s problem about lending money to her young cousin had been growing more and more complicated, and her conscience was more and more harassed about what she ought to do. She did not wish to inform upon Clytie. It was not her idea of good ethics. But Clytie was constantly putting her into situations where it was either necessary to do so, or else to actually lie about things when she was questioned.
    Cousin Miriam was not gentle, unworldly, and conscientious, as Astra remembered her own mother to have been. She was pretty and flighty, and rather inclined to be worldly and have easy standards of living. But she was very strict with regard to certain forms and ceremonies, and her ideas of what Clytie should or should not do were not at all Clytie’s ideas. It followed, therefore, that Clytie did many things in direct disobedience to her mother’s commands and got away with it in the main, often from behind the screen of an unwilling