Mary's mother - if that was her picture - may have been a wastrel in her spare time (she had thirteen children by a minister of the church), but if so her gay and dissipated life had left too few traces of its pleasures on her face.
Thad risked everything, including his farm, to set Abner up in the grocery business in the town of Hargrave, only to have Abner turn wastrel and lose everything.