Half of what she made every month went to Will at Tara, part to Rhett to repay his loan and the rest she hoarded. No miser ever counted his gold oftener than she and no miser ever had greater fear of losing it. She would not put money in the bank, for it might fail or the Yankees might confiscate it. So she carried what she could with her, tucked into her corset, and hid small wads of bills about the house, under loose bricks on the hearth, in her scrap bag, between the pages of the Bible. And her temper grew shorter and shorter as the weeks went by, for everydollar she saved would be one more dollar to lose if disaster descended.
hoarded: 囤积
miser: 吝啬鬼
confiscate: 没收
tucked: 藏进
corset: 紧身胸衣
hearth: 火炉
scrap bag: 废旧包
Frank, Pitty and the servants bore her outbursts with maddening kindness, attributing her bad disposition to her pregnancy , never realizing the true cause. Frank knew that pregnant women must be humored, so he put his pride in his pocket and said nothing more about her running the mills and her going about town at such a time, as no lady should do. Her conduct was a constant embarrassment to him but he reckoned he could endure it for a while longer. After the baby came, he knew she would be the same sweet, feminine girl he had courted. But in spite of everything he did to appease her, she continued to have her tantrums and often he thought she acted like one possessed.
outbursts: 爆发
maddening: 发疯的
disposition: 性格
appease: 安抚
tantrums: 发脾气
possessed: 疯狂的
No one seemed to realize what really possessed her, what drove her like a mad woman. It was a passion to get her affairs in order before she had to retire behind doors, to have as much money as possible in case the deluge broke upon her again, to have a stout levee of cash against the rising tide of Yankee hate. Money was the obsession dominating her mind these days. When she thought of the baby at all, it was with baffled rage at the untimeliness of it.
deluge: 洪水
stout: 肥硕的
obsession: 困扰
untimeliness: 不合时宜
"Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!"
Atlanta had been scandalized enough when Scarlett, a woman, began opearting the sawmill but, as time went by, the town decided there was no limit to what she would do. Her sharp trading was shocking, especially when her poor mother had been a Robillard, and it was positively indecent pregnant. No respectable white woman and few negroes ever went outside their homes from the moment they first suspected they were with child, and Mrs. Merriwether declared indignantly that from the way Scarlett was acting she was likely to have the baby on the public streets.
scandalized: 震惊
declared: 声明
But all the previous criticism of her conduct was as nothing compared with the buzz of gossip that now went through the town. Scarlett was not only trafficking with the Yankees but was giving every appearance of really liking it.
trafficking: 营业
Mrs. Merriwether and many other Southerners were also doing business with the newcomers from the North, but the difference was that they did not like it and plainly showed that they did not like it. And Scarlett did, or seemed to, which was just as bad. She had actually taken tea with the Yankee officers' wives in their homes! In fact, she had done practically everything short of inviting them into her own home, and the town guessed she would do even that, except for Aunt Pitty and Frank.
Scarlett knew the town was talking but she did not care, could not afford to care. She still hated the Yankees with as fierce a hate as on the day when they tried to burn Tara, but she could dissemble that hate. She knew that if she was going to make money, she would have to make it out of the Yankees, and she had learned that buttering them up with smiles and kind words was the surest ways to get their business for her mill.
buttering them up: 把他们弄糊涂。
dissemble: 掩饰
surest: 最可靠的
斯嘉丽成熟了，不是不恨，只是把恨藏起来了，Yankees 对她的伤害还历历在目，不过她为了生存，只能磨平棱角，以笑对人。说到底，还是生活所迫啊，都会为了生存压力头大，还有那起伏不定的油价。想起来一句话：「不是这该死的生活，谁愿意把自己弄的满身才华。」
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