was a stockbroker’s mistress at one time—.  But she had married and settled down at Winchester ...  She met her Canon—­the Alpine traveller ... in Switzerland.  I felt if she took no money from mother’s ‘houses,’ I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any rate have some kith and kin to go to.  She had no children....  But—­I must have told you all this years ago?—­she almost pushed me out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and buried me in the garden of the Canonry....

“I’ve examined the business of the Warren Hotels Ltd. since then, but it’s a private company, and all its doings are so cleverly concealed....  Aunt Liz doesn’t figure amongst the shareholders any more than Crofts does.  That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now, and mother the rest....  Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly didn’t get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of under L4,000....  I read his will at Somerset House....  She has had her portrait in the Queen because she gave a large subscription to the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of Wolvesey as a clergy house....  Mother must be very rich, I should judge, from certain indications.  I expect she will retire from the ‘Hotels,’ some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with her money....  She’ll have her portrait in the Queen some day as a Vice-President of the Girls’ Friendly Society!...  And yet she’s such a gambler and a rake that she may get pinched over the White Slave traffic....  I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the other day, fearing every moment to see mother’s name mixed up with it, or else an allusion to her ‘Hotels.’  But I fancy she has been wise enough—­indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the Continent only—­Austria, Alsace, Bohemia, Belgium, Italy, the Rhineland, Paris, Russia, Poland.  Knowing what we British people are, can’t you almost predict the bias of Aunt Liz’s mind?  How she would solace herself that her dividends were not derived from the prostitution of English girls but only of ’foreigners’?...”

Norie:  “You seem to have studied the geography of the business pretty thoroughly!...”

Vivie (bitterly):  “Yes.  I have talked it over with Stead from time to time.  I believe he has only spared mother and the Warren Hotels out of consideration for me ...  He wants me to change my surname and give myself a chance...”