The parlour-maid enters, and casts more than one searching glance at Vivie’s bruised features, but performs her duties in a workmanlike manner.

Frank:  “My story?  Oh well, it’s a happy one on the whole—­very happy.  Soon as the war was over, I got busy in Rhodesia and pitched on a perfect site for a stock and fruit farm.  The B.S.A.  Co. was good to me because I’d known Cecil Rhodes and Dr. Jim; and by nineteen four I was going well, they’d made me a magistrate, and some of my mining shares had turned out trumps.  Then Westlock came out as Governor General, and Lady Enid had brought out with her a jolly nice girl as governess to her children.  She was the daughter of a parson in Hertfordshire near the Brinsley estates.  Well, I won’t say—­bein’ the soul of truth—­that I fell in love with her—­straight away—­because I don’t think I ever fell deep in love—­straight away—­with any girl but you, Vivie.  But I did feel, as it was hopeless askin’ you to marry me, here was the wife I wanted.  She was good enough to accept me and the Westlocks were awfully kind and made everything easy.  Lady Enid’s a perfect brick—­and, by the bye, she’s a great Suffragist too.  Well:  we were married at Pretoria in 1904, and now we’ve got four children; a sturdy young Frank, a golupshous Vivie—­oh, I told Muriel everything, she’s the sort of woman you can—­And the other two are called Bertha after my mother and Charlotte after Mrs. Bernard Shaw.  I sent you, Vivie—­a newspaper with the announcement of my marriage—­Dj’ever get it?”

Vivie:  “Never.  But I was undergoing a sea-change of my own, just then, which I will tell you all about presently.”

Frank:  “Well then.  I came back to England on a hurried visit.  You remember, Praddy?  But you were away in Italy and I couldn’t find Vivie anywhere.  I called round at where your office was—­Fraser and Warren—­where we parted in 1897—­and there was no more Fraser and Warren.  Nobody knew anything about what had become of you.  P’raps I might have found out, but I got a bit huffy, thought you might have written me a line about my marriage.  I did write to Miss Fraser, but the letter was returned from the Dead Letter office,” (Vivie:  “She married Colonel Armstrong.”) “Well, there it is!  By some devilish lucky chance I had no sooner got to London from Southhampton, day before yesterday, than some one told me all about the expected row between the Suffragettes and the police.  Thought I’d go and see for myself what this meant.  No idea before how far the thing had gone, or what brutes the police could be.  Had a sort of notion, don’t know why, that dear old Viv would be in it, up to the neck.  Got mixed up in the crowd and helped a woman or two out of it.  Lady Feenix—­they said it was—­picked up some and took ’em into her motor.  And then I heard a cry which could only be in Vivie’s voice—­dear old Viv—­(leans forward with shining eyes to press her hand) and ... there we are.  How’re the bruises?”