“You know, Praddy dear, I want to be a Barrister.  But as a female they will never call me to the Bar.  So I’m going to send Vivien Warren off for a long absence abroad—­the few who think about me will probably conclude that money has carried the day and that I’ve gone to help my mother in her business—­and in her absence Mr. Vavasour Williams will take up the running.  David V. Williams—­don’t interrupt me—­will study for the Bar, eat through his terms—­six dinners a year, isn’t it?—­pass his examinations, and be called to the English Bar in about three years from now.  Didn’t you once have a pupil called Vavasour Williams?”

Praed:  “What, David, the Welsh boy?  Yes.  His name reminded me of your mother in one of her stages.  David Vavasour Williams.  I took him on in—­let me see?  I think it was in 1895 or early 1896.  But how did you hear about him?”

Vivie:  “Never mind, or never mind for the moment.  Tell me some more about him.”

Praed:  “Well to sum him up briefly he was what school boys and subalterns would call ‘a rotter.’  Not without an almost mordid cleverness; but the Welsh strain in him which in the father turned to emotional religion—­the father was Vicar or Rector of Pontystrad—­came out in the boy in unhealthy fancies.  He had almost the talent of Aubrey Beardsley.  But I didn’t think he had a good influence over my other pupils, so before I planned that Italian journey—­on which you refused to accompany me—­I advised him to leave my tuition—­I wasn’t modern enough, I said.  I also advised him to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a sane architect—­he despised questions of housemaids’ closets and sanitation and lifts and hot-water supply—­or a scene painter.  I think he might have had a great career at Drury Lane over fairy palaces or millionaire dwellings.  But I turned him out of my studio, though I put the fact less brutally before his father—­said I should be absent a long while in Italy and that I feared the boy was too undisciplined.  Afterwards I think he went into some South African police force...”

Vivie:  “He did, and died last year in a South African hospital.  Had he—­er—­er—­many relations, I mean did he come of well-known people?”

Praed:  “I fancy not.  His father was just a dreamy old Welsh clergyman always seeing visions and believing himself a descendant of the Druids, Sam Gardner told me; and his mother had either died long ago or had run away from her husband, I forget which.  In a way, I’m sorry David’s dead.  He had a sort of weird talent and wild good looks.  By the way, he wasn’t altogether unlike you.”

Vivie:  “Thank you for the double-edged compliment.  However what you say is very interesting.  Well now, my idea is that David Vavasour Williams did not die in a military hospital; he recovered and returned, firmly resolved to lead a new life.—­Is his father living by the bye?  Did he believe his son was dead?”