The Extraordinary Confessions of Diana Please

For three days I remained shut into my rooms at the "Orient," not daring to go out, a prey to the utmost nervousness and agitation. Do not suppose that on that account I was the less determined in my plans for vengeance. But revenge that lays itself open to retribution misses the better half of itself. I remembered my old friend Mr. Roper's dictum, and beat my brains only for the means to strike with impunity. I was not from the first without a design. The difficulty was to give it practical effect; because for the moment I could not use Gogo. For myself, under my assumed name, I might lie secure in this hiding. To make _him_ my carrier to the English Embassy would be to mark a sure track to my retreat with every punch of his wooden legs. I dared not let him out; I dared not even temporarily part with him in my peril; I dared not come to a decision, while knowing that my life depended on a wise one. For I was a renegade revolutionary -- I could not blink the fact.

Though I had never hitherto actually set foot in Naples itself, there must be many to know me by report for that apostle of the new creed of equality who, but a few years before, had stumped their country, winning converts. And now! the safety of many men -- and women too -- was in my hands; and not Pissani, nor those others when they came to learn, would have forgotten the nature of my secession, or the significance of the threats which had accompanied it. If passion had given me away, caution must redeem me. I had no faith in Patty's power to protect me. The occasion was too desperate; the interests involved were too many. Pissani was a reformer before he was a lover. I _must_ be sacrificed, if possible, to the cause I had the means to betray.