Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria’s energetic nature prevented her from giving up.  Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the harder she clutched them.

She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow her.

“Adrian,” she said, turning upon him in the passage, “you mentioned a house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning.  I desire you to take me to that woman immediately.”

The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude.  He had hoped he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after enjoying the comedy of real life.

“My dear aunt"...he was beginning to insinuate.

“Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat,” said Mrs. Doria.

There was nothing for it but to obey.  He stamped his assent to the Pilgrim’s dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation and a nuisance.  However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.

What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or other, and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could use it in wrath.  She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse.  She dared not abuse her brother to his face:  him she would have to console.  Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she was aware, bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic, ground by a discussion of the case.  So she drove to Bessy Berry simply to inquire whither her nephew had flown.

When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a woman of energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no mercy.  Bessy Berry’s creditor came to her in female form that night.  She then beheld it in all its terrors.  Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male, a disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male attributes, and the peculiar male characteristic of being moved, and ultimately silenced, by tears.  As female, her creditor was terrible indeed.  Still, had it not been a late hour, Bessy Berry would have died rather than speak openly that her babes had sped to make their nest in the Isle of Wight.  They had a long start, they were out of the reach of pursuers, they were safe, and she told what she had to tell.  She told more than was wise of her to tell.  She made mention of her early service in the family, and of her little pension.  Alas! her little pension!  Her creditor had come expecting no payment—­come; as creditors are wont in such moods, just to take it out of her—­to employ the familiar term.  At once Mrs. Doria pounced upon the pension.

“That, of course, you know is at an end,” she said in the calmest manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her.  She only asked a little consideration for her feelings.