For the rest she spent August and early September in "mugging up" the firm's business.

Although deep down in her curious little heart, under all her affectation of hardness and insolent disdain of public or family opinion she firmly loved her architect and the children she had borne him, she desired quite as passionately to be self-supporting, to earn a sufficient income of her own, to be dependent on no one.

She might have her passing caprices and her loose and flippant mode of talking, but she wasn't going to be a failure, a cadger, a parasite, a "fallen" woman.

She fully realized that in England no woman _has_ fallen who is self-supporting, whose income meets her expenses and who pays her way.

Given those guarantees, all else that she does which is not actually criminal is eventually put down to mere eccentricity.
So Honoria's offer and Honoria's business provided her with a most welcome opening.