CROFTS.  Well, thats all it is.  Your mother has got a genius for managing such things.  We’ve got two in Brussels, one in Ostend, one in Vienna, and two in Budapest.  Of course there are others besides ourselves in it; but we hold most of the capital; and your mother’s indispensable as managing director.  You’ve noticed, I daresay, that she travels a good deal.  But you see you can’t mention such things in society.  Once let out the word hotel and everybody thinks you keep a public-house.  You wouldn’t like people to say that of your mother, would you?  Thats why we’re so reserved about it.  By the way, youll keep it to yourself, won’t you?  Since it’s been a secret so long, it had better remain so.

VIVIE.  And this is the business you invite me to join you in?

CROFTS.  Oh no.  My wife shan’t be troubled with business.  Youll not be in it more than you’ve always been.

VIVIE. I always been!  What do you mean?

CROFTS.  Only that you’ve always lived on it.  It paid for your education and the dress you have on your back.  Don’t turn up your nose at business, Miss Vivie:  where would your Newnhams and Girtons be without it?

VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself] Take care.  I know what this business is.

CROFTS [starting, with a suppressed oath] Who told you?

VIVIE.  Your partner.  My mother.

CROFTS [black with rage] The old—­

VIVIE.  Just so.

[He swallows the epithet and stands for a moment swearing and raging foully to himself.  But he knows that his cue is to be sympathetic.  He takes refuge in generous indignation.]

CROFTS.  She ought to have had more consideration for you. I’d never have told you.

VIVIE.  I think you would probably have told me when we were married:  it would have been a convenient weapon to break me in with.

CROFTS [quite sincerely] I never intended that.  On my word as a gentleman I didn’t.

[Vivie wonders at him.  Her sense of the irony of his protest cools and braces her.  She replies with contemptuous self-possession.]

VIVIE.  It does not matter.  I suppose you understand that when we leave here today our acquaintance ceases.

CROFTS.  Why?  Is it for helping your mother?

VIVIE.  My mother was a very poor woman who had no reasonable choice but to do as she did.  You were a rich gentleman; and you did the same for the sake of 35 per cent.  You are a pretty common sort of scoundrel, I think.  That is my opinion of you.

CROFTS [after a stare:  not at all displeased, and much more at his ease on these frank terms than on their former ceremonious ones] Ha! ha! ha! ha!  Go it, little missie, go it:  it doesn’t hurt me and it amuses you.  Why the devil shouldn’t I invest my money that way?  I take the interest on my capital like other people:  I hope you don’t think I dirty my own hands with the work.