Mrs. Warren:  “Not a bad idea.  Do me a lot of good.  I was feeling awfully down, Vivie, when you came.  I wasn’t altogether taken aback at your coming, dearie, ’cos Praddy had given me a kind of a hint you might turn up.  But somehow, though everything goes well in business—­we seldom had so busy a time as during this last Humanitarian Congress of the Powers—­all the diplomats came here—­mostly the old ones, the old and respectable—­oh we all like respectability—­yet I never ’ad such low spirits.  My gals used to come in here and find me cryin’ as often as not....  ’Comment, Madame,’ they used to say, ’pourquoi pleurez vous?  Tout va si bien! Quelle clientele, et pas chiche’—­I suppose you understand French?  However about this trip to the country, look on it as settled.  I’ll pack up now and away we go in the afternoon.  And not to any of your measly Hotels or village inns.  Why I’ve got me own country place and me own auto.  Villa de Beau-sejour, a mile or so beyond the lovely beech woods of Tervueren.  Ain’t so far from Louvain, so’s I can send you on there one day—­Ah!  There’s some one you’d like to see in Louvain, if I mistake not!  You always was one for findin’ out things, and maybe I’ll tell you more, now you’ve come back to me, than what I’d a done with you standing up so stiff and proud and me unfit to take up the hem of your skirt....  How I do ramble.  Suppose it’s old age comin’ on” (shudders).  “About this Villa de Beau-sejour ...  It was once a farm house, and even now it’s the farm where I get me eggs and milk and butter an’ the fruit and vegetables for this hotel. He gave it to me—­you know whom I mean by ‘He’? ... don’t do to talk too loud in a place like this....  They say he’s pretty bad just now, not likely to live much longer.  I was his mistress once, years ago—­at least I was more a confidante than anything else. How he used to laugh at my stories!  ’Que tu es une drolesse,’ he used to say.  I never used to mince matters and we were none the worse for that.  Bless you, he wasn’t as bad as they painted him, ’long of all this fuss about the blacks.  As I say, he gave me the Villa de Beau-sejour, and used to say if I behaved myself he might some day make me ‘Baronne de Beau-sejour.’  How’d you have liked that, eh?  Sort of morganatic Queen?  I lay I’d have put some good management into the runnin’ of those places.  Aie!  How they used to swindle ’im, and he believing himself always such a sharp man of business!  When that Vaughan hussy...”

Vivie:  “Very well.  We’ll go to Villa Beau-sejour.  But don’t give me too many of your reminiscences or I may leave you after all and go back to England.  Whilst I’m with you, you must give up rouge and patchouli and the kind of conversation that goes with them.  I’m out here trying to do my duty and duty is always unpleasant.  I don’t want to be a kill-joy, but don’t give me more of that side of your character than you can help.  It—­it makes me sick, mother...”