Explain this quote: "The clan instantley saw the chance of exacting compensation on Mattie."

Mattie's father, Orin Silver, had taken over his a drug business. When he died the accounting books revealed many irregularities and debt. The "clan" meaning extended family wanted to exact some type of revenge. Poor Mattie was twenty, single and broke. This "revenge" involved sending poor Maddie to a rural farm to serve a miserable old woman, Zeena a distant relative, who pretended to be an invalid.