If she could only master the “Anti” arguments—­they sounded so convincing from the lips of Miss Violet Markham or Mrs. Humphry Ward or some suave King’s Counsel with the remnants of mutton-chop whiskers—­if she could wean Michael away from that disturbing nonsense—­he could assign “militancy” as the justification of his change of mind...!  All that was asked by Authority, so far as she could interpret hints from great ladies, was neutrality, the return of Professor Rossiter to the paths of pure science in which area no one disputed his eminence. Then he might receive that knighthood that was long overdue; better still his next lot of discoveries in anatomy might bring him the peerage he richly deserved and which her wealth would support.  He could then rest on his oars, cease his more or less nasty investigations; they could take a place in the country and move from this much too large house which lay almost outside the limits of Society’s London to a really well-appointed flat in Westminster and have a thoroughly enjoyable old age.

Honoria in these times did not see so much of Vivie as before.  Her warrior husband spent a good deal of 1912 at home as he had a Hounslow command.  He had come to realize—­some spiteful person had told him—­who Vivie’s mother had been, and told Honoria in accents of finality that the “Aunt Vivie” nonsense must be dropped and Vivie must not come to the house.  At the most, if she must meet her friend of college days—­oh, he was quite willing to believe in her personal propriety, though there were odd stories in circulation about her dressing as a man and doing some very rum things for the W.S.P.U.—­still if she must see her, it would have to be in public places or at her friends, at Lady Feenix’s, if she liked.  No.  He wasn’t attacking the cause of Suffrage.  Women could have the vote and welcome so far as he was concerned:  they couldn’t be greater fools than the men, and they were probably less corrupt.  He himself never remembered voting in his life, so Honoria was no worse off than her husband.  But he drew the line in his children’s friends at the daughter of a....

Here Honoria to avoid hearing something she could not forgive put her plump hand over his bristly mouth.  He kissed it and somehow she couldn’t take the high tone she had at first intended.  She simply said “she would see about it” and met the difficulty by giving up her suffrage parties for a bit and attending Lady Maud’s instead; where you met not only poor Vivie, but—­had she been in London and guaranteed reformed and rangee—­you might have met Vivie’s mother; as well as the Duchess of Dulborough—­American, and intensely Suffrage—­the charwoman from Little Francis Street, the bookseller’s wife, the “mother of the maids” from Derry and Toms; and that very clever chemist who had mended Juliet Duff’s nose when she fell on the ice at Princes’—­they would both be there.  Honoria said nothing to Vivie and Vivie said nothing to Honoria about the inhibition, but together with her irrational jealousy of Eoanthropos dawsoni and irritation at the growing contentedness with things as they were on the part of Rossiter, it made her a trifle more reckless in her militancy.