CONFESSIONS
What stung Gwendolen, what made her smart almost beyond endurance, was that she had exchanged the Warden for an umbrella. The transaction had been simple, and sudden, and inevitable. The Warden was in London, a free man, and there was the umbrella in the corner of the room, hers. It was looking at her, and she had not paid for it. The bill would be sent to the Lodgings, the bill for the umbrella and the gloves. The bill would be re-directed and would reach her—bills always did reach one, however frequently one changed one's address. Private letters sometimes got misdirected and mislaid, but never bills. Friends sometimes say, "We couldn't write because we didn't know your address." Tradespeople never say this, they don't omit to send their bills merely because they don't know your address. If they don't know your address, they search for it!
The pure imbecility of her behaviour at Christ Church about that ten-shilling note was now apparent to Gwendolen. She could not think, now, how she could have done anything so inconceivably silly, and so useless as to put herself in the power of Mrs. Potten. She would never, never in all her life, do such a thing again. Another time, when hard up and needing something necessary, she would borrow, or she would go straight to the shop and order "the umbrella" (as after all, she had done), and she would take the sporting chance of being able to pay the bill some time. But never would she again touch notes or coins that belonged to people she knew, and especially those belonging to Mrs. Potten! Oh, what a wickedly cruel punishment she had to bear, merely because she had had a sort of joke about ten shillings belonging to Mrs. Potten.
One thing she would never forgive as long as she lived, and that was Mrs. Potten's meanness. She would never forget the way in which Mrs. Potten took advantage of her by getting her into Potten End alone, with nobody to protect her.
First of all Mrs. Potten had pretended to be merely sorry. Then she spoke about Mr. Harding and Mr. Bingham being witnesses and made the whole thing appear as a sort of crime, and then she ended up with saying: "The Warden must not be kept in ignorance of all this! That is out of the question. He has a right to know." That came as an awful shock to Gwendolen, and made her burst into tears.
"Are you afraid, child, he will break off the engagement?" was all that Mrs. Potten said, and then the horrid old woman asked all sorts of horrid questions, and wormed out all kinds of things: that the Warden had not actually said he was in love, that he had scarcely spoken to her for three days, and that he had not said "good-bye" that morning when he left for London. How Mrs. Potten had managed to sneak it out of her Gwendolen did not know, but Mrs. Potten gave her no time to think of what she was saying, and being so much upset and so much afraid of Mrs. Potten lots of things came out. And yet all the time she knew things were going wrong because of the wicked look on Mrs. Potten's face.
However, Gwendolen had all through stuck to it (and it was the truth) that she had never intended to do more than "sort of joke" with the note, and this Mrs. Potten simply wouldn't understand. And when she, Gwendolen, promised, on her honour, to make it "all right," by wiring to her mother to send her a postal order for ten shillings by return, Mrs. Potten sprang like a tiger on her: "Why wire for it? Why not return it now?" Oh, the whole thing was awful!
After this Mrs. Potten's voice had changed to ice, and she put on a perfectly beastly tone.
"Gwendolen, you shock me beyond words, and oblige me to take a very decided step in the matter."
Then she stopped, and Gwendolen could recall that horrible moment of suspense. Then came words that made Gwendolen shudder to think of.