I think they returned to England in January, 1919, so that Michael might get back quickly to his work of mending the maimed, now transferred to English hospitals; and so that Vivie—­always a practical woman—­should prove her mother’s will, secure her heritage and have it in hand as a fund from which to promote all the happiness she could.  I doubt whether she will give much of it to “causes” rather than cases and to politics in preference to persons.  I think she was awfully disgusted when she was back in the England of to-day not to find Mrs. Fawcett Prime Ministress and First Lady of the Treasury, Annie Kenney at the Board of Trade and Christabel Pankhurst running the Ministry of Health.  It was disheartening after the long struggle for the Woman’s Vote and the equality of the sexes in opportunity to find the same old men-muddlers in charge of all public affairs and departments of state, and the only woman on the benches of the House of Commons a millionaire peeress never before identified with the struggle for the Woman’s Cause.

However I think her disenchantment did not diminish the rapture at finding herself once more in the intimacy of Honoria Armstrong.  Sir Petworth, when he ran over on leave from the Army of Occupation, thought her enormously improved, though he had the tact not to say so.  He frankly made the amende honorable for his suspicions and churlishness of the past, and himself—­I think—­insisted on his frank and friendly children calling her “Aunt Vivie.”  I am equally sure that Vivie was not long in London before she appeared at dear old Praddy’s studio, beautifully gowned and looking years younger than forty-three; and I shouldn’t wonder but that her presence once more in his circle will give his frame a fillip so that he may cheat Death over a few more annual outbreaks of influenza.  I am convinced that he has left all his money, after providing a handsome annuity for the parlour-maid, to Vivie, knowing that in her hands, far more—­and far more quickly than in those that direct princely and public charities—­will his funds reach the students and the poverty-stricken artists whom he wants to benefit.

I think that after spending the first five months of 1919 in London, getting No. 1 Park Crescent tidy again and fully repaired (because Michael wished to pursue more thoroughly than ever his biological researches), Vivie and Michael went off to spend their real honeymoon in the Occupied Territory of the Rhineland, in that never-to-be forgotten June, memorable for its splendid sunshine and the beauty of its flowers and foliage.  I think they did this expressly (under the guise of a visit to General Armstrong), so that Vivie and Minna von Stachelberg—­now Minna Schultz—­might foregather at Bonn.  Minna had married again, an officer of no family but of means and of fine physique whom she had nursed in Brussels.  His left arm had been shattered, but the skill of the Belgian surgeons and her devoted nursing had saved it from being amputated.  She had wished however to have him examined by some great exponent of curative surgery at Bonn University, and the conjunction of the celebrated Sir Michael Rossiter—­who in his discussions of anatomy with the Bonn professors forgot there had ever been a war between Britain and Germany—­was most opportune.