But presently she took the initiative in conversation, at first slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but unostentatiously about herself.

So colorless was her intonation that at times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some conversation she had held with another.
She had lived there ever since she had been in California.

Her husband had bought the Spanish title to the property when they first married.
The property at his death was found to be greatly involved; she had been obliged to part with much of it to support her children--four girls and a boy.

She had been compelled to withdraw the girls from the convent at Santa Clara to help about the house; the boy was too young--she feared, too shiftless--to do anything.

The farm did not pay; the land was poor; she knew nothing about farming; she had been brought up in New Orleans, where her father had been a judge, and she didn't understand country life.