She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature.

Much of the patrimony is managed by a foundation and, in return for tax breaks, belongs by law to the nation and cannot be sold.

In another letter, written that same month, the administrative director of the Owens Foundation, Mary Dykes, who is Delia Owens's sister-in-law, wrote, "ABC was looking for sensationalism."