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.