the cost of things one afternoon at Lady Singleby's garden-party, and
spoken of the City as the place to help to swell an income, if only you
have an acquaintance with some of the chief City men. The great mine was
named, and the rush for allotments. She knew a couple of the Directors.
They vowed to her that ten per cent. was a trifle; the fortune to be
expected out of the mine was already clearly estimable at forties and
fifties. For their part they anticipated cent. per cent. Mrs. Cherson
said she wanted money, and had therefore invested in the mine. It seemed
so consequent, the cost of things being enormous! She and her sister
Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett owned husbands who did their bidding, because of their
having the brains, it might be understood. Thus five thousand pounds
invested would speedily bring five thousand pounds per annum. Diana had
often dreamed of the City of London as the seat of magic; and taking the
City's contempt for authorcraft and the intangible as, from its point of
view, justly founded, she had mixed her dream strangely with an ancient
notion of the City's probity. Her broker's shaking head did not damp her
ardour for shares to the full amount of her ability to purchase. She
remembered her satisfaction at the allotment; the golden castle shot up
from this fountain mine. She had a frenzy for mines and fished in some
English with smaller sums. 'I am now a miner,' she had exclaimed,
between dismay at her audacity and the pride of it. Why had she not
consulted Redworth? He would peremptorily have stopped the frenzy in its
first intoxicating effervescence. She, like Mrs. Cherson, like all women
who have plunged upon the cost of things, wanted money. She naturally
went to the mine. Address him for counsel in the person of dupe, she
could not; shame was a barrier. Could she tell him that the prattle of
a woman, spendthrift as Mrs. Cherson, had induced her to risk her money?
Latterly the reports of Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett were not of the flavour to
make association of their names agreeable to his hearing.