The Duchess has what Oliver lacks, despite his financial success and vast wealth. As the Duchess well knows, he most wants access to aristocracy and the halls of political power that are a part of her world.

Because of his desire for this access, Oliver deceives himself into believing that the pearls the Duchess offers as security for the loan he gives her are real. That way, though he knows in his heart that he is lying to himself, he can write her the loan check for $20,000. She has tempted him with the offer of a "long week-end" at her country estate. This excites his desires—he imagines riding with her daughter Diana, meeting the prime minister, and a vague promise of a visit by "royalty." Diana is the most compelling bait—Oliver, who grew up in a "filthy little alley," would like nothing more than to marry into the aristocracy.

After the Duchess has left, he holds the pearls up to the light and realizes they are "rotten at the core"—just like the Duchess and he himself.

At this epiphany he says:

"Forgive me, oh, my mother!" ... raising his hand as if he asked pardon of the old woman in the picture. And again he was a little boy in the alley where they sold dogs on Sunday. "For," he murmured, laying the palms of his hands together, "it is to be a long week-end."

He realizes now, too, that he has been deceived in thinking that being invited to the Duchess's home will give him the access he craves. He might be there, and if the Duchess hasn't lied, so might Diana, the prime minister, and a royal, but he will never be one of them. Suddenly, the allure of a "long" weekend at an aristocratic estate has turned into having to endure what will feel like an unpleasantly "long" weekend there.