Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner

Mahon liked music; so Mrs. Worthington sent her car for them. Mrs. Worthington lived in a large, beautiful old house which her husband, conveniently dead, had bequeathed, with a colorless male cousin who had false teeth and no occupation that anyone knew of, to her. The male cousin's articulation was bad (he had been struck in the mouth with an ax in a dice game in Cuba during the Spanish-American War): perhaps this was why he did nothing.

Mrs. Worthington ate too much and suffered from gout and a flouted will. So her church connection was rather trying to the minister and his flock. But she had money -- that panacea for all ills of the flesh and spirit. She believed in rights for women, as long as women would let her dictate what was right for them.