The tremendous pressure upon our consciousness of the material cause, when we find ourselves cast among the breakers of moral difficulties and endeavour to elude that mudvisaged monster, chiefly by feigning unconsciousness, was an experience of Diana’s, in the crisis to which she was wrought.  Her wits were too acute, her nature too direct, to permit of a lengthened confusion.  She laid the scourge on her flesh smartly.—­I gave him these privileges because I am weak as the weakest, base as my enemies proclaim me.  I covered my woman’s vile weakness with an air of intellectual serenity that he, choosing his moment, tore away, exposing me to myself, as well as to him, the most ordinary of reptiles.  I kept up a costly household for the sole purpose of seeing him and having him near me.  Hence this bitter need of money!—­Either it must be money or disgrace.  Money would assist her quietly to amend and complete her work.  Yes, and this want of money, in a review of the last two years, was the material cause of her recklessness.  It was, her revived and uprising pudency declared, the principal; the only cause.  Mere want of money.

And she had a secret worth thousands!  The secret of a day, no more:  anybody’s secret after some four and twenty hours.

She smiled at the fancied elongation and stare of the features of Mr. Tonans in his editorial midnight den.

What if he knew it and could cap it with something novel and stranger?  Hardly.  But it was an inciting suggestion.

She began to tremble as a lightning-flash made visible her fortunes recovered, disgrace averted, hours of peace for composition stretching before her:  a summer afternoon’s vista.

It seemed a duel between herself and Mr. Tonans, and she sure of her triumph—­Diana victrix!

‘Danvers!’ she called.

‘Is it to undress, ma’am?’ said the maid, entering to her.

’You are not afraid of the streets, you tell me.  I have to go down to the City, I think.  It is urgent.  Yes, I must go.  If I were to impart the news to you, your head would be a tolling bell for a month.’

‘You will take a cab, ma’am.’

’We must walk out to find one.  I must go, though I should have to go on foot.  Quick with bonnet and shawl; muffle up warmly.  We have never been out so late:  but does it matter?  You’re a brave soul, I’m sure, and you shall have your fee.’

‘I don’t care for money, ma’am.’

‘When we get home you shall kiss me.’

Danvers clothed her mistress in furs and rich wrappings:  Not paid for! was Diana’s desperate thought, and a wrong one; but she had to seem the precipitated bankrupt and succeeded.  She was near being it.  The boiling of her secret carried her through the streets rapidly and unobservantly except of such small things as the glow of the lights on the pavements and the hushed cognizance of the houses, in silence to a thoroughfare where a willing cabman was met.  The destination named, he nodded alertly he had driven gentlemen there at night from the House of Commons, he said.