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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: to represent her as a parti?
It was perfectly true that I could not afford to go on with my
rooms at a fancy price and that I had already devoted to my
undertaking almost all the hard cash I had set apart for it.
My patience and my time were by no means exhausted, but I should
be able to draw upon them only on a more usual Venetian basis.
I was willing to pay the venerable woman with whom my pecuniary dealings
were such a discord twice as much as any other padrona di casa would
have asked, but I was not willing to pay her twenty times as much.
I told her so plainly, and my plainness appeared to have some success,
for she exclaimed, "Very good; you have done what I asked--
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