Norie:  “I see” (pausing).  “Of course it is rather an idea, as you refuse to disguise yourself by marriage.  You’d change your name and then listen with equanimity to fulminations against the Warren Hotels.  But there would be an awkwardness in the firm.  We oughtn’t to change our title just as we are getting a good clientele....  I must think ...  If only we could pretend you’d been left some property—­but that sort of lie is soon found out!—­and had to change your name to—­to—­to.  Oh well, we could soon think of some name beginning with a W—­Walters, Waddilove—­Waddilove is a delicious name in cold weather, suggesting cotton-wool or a warm duvet—­or Wilson—­or Wilberforce.  But I’m afraid the staff—­Rose Mullet and Lily Steynes and the amorous Bertie Adams—­would think it odd, put two and two together, and guess right.  Warren, after all, is such a common name.  And we’ve got so used to our three helpers, we could hardly turn them off, and take on new people whom perhaps we couldn’t trust....  We must think it over....

“Now I must go back to Queen Anne’s Mansions and sit a little while with Mummy.  Come and dine with us?  There’ll only be us three ... no horrid man to fall in love with you....  You needn’t put on a low dress ... and we’ll go to the dress circle at some play afterwards.”

Vivie:  “But those papers on my desk?  I must have your opinion for or against...”

Norie:  “All right.  It’s half-past five.  I’ll give them half an hour’s study whilst you wash up the tea things and titivate.  Then we’ll take a hansom to Quansions:  the Underground is so grimy.”

CHAPTER II

HONORIA AND HER FRIENDS

The story of Honoria Fraser was something like this:  partly guesswork, I admit.  Although I know her well I can only put her past together by deductions based on a few admitted facts, one or two letters and occasional unfinished sentences, interrupted by people coming in.  Is it not always thus with our friends and acquaintances?  I long to know all about them from their birth (including date and place of birth and parentage) onwards; what the father’s profession was and why on earth he married the mother (after I saw the daguerreotype portrait), and how they became possessed of so much money, and why she went back to live with her mother between the birth of her second child and the near advent of her third.  But in how very few cases do we know their whole story, do we even care to know more than is sufficient for our purpose in issuing or accepting invitations?  There are the Dombeys—­the Gorings as they’re now called, who live near us.  I’ve seen the tombstone of Lucilla Smith in Goring churchyard, but I don’t know for a fact that Lord Goring was the father of Lucilla’s son (who was killed in the war).  I guess he was, from this and that, from what Mrs. Legg told me, and what I overheard at the Sterns’.  If he wasn’t, then he has only himself to thank for the wrong assumption:  I mean, from his goings-on.