Some time before Vivie Warren had taken her departure, she had left behind in Honoria Fraser’s temporary care a Power of Attorney duly executed in favour of David Vavasour Williams; and reciprocally D.V.W. had executed another in favour of Vivien Warren.  Both these documents lay securely in the little safe that David had had fitted into the wall of his sitting-room in Fig Tree Court.  Also David had opened an account in his own name after he got back from Wales, at the Temple Bar Branch of the C. &.  C. Bank.  Into this he now paid the cheque for twenty-five pounds which his father had sent as pocket money.

A few days afterwards, Vivie Warren reappeared—­in spirit—­and indited a letter to Frank Gardner’s agents in Cape Town.  She was careful to give no address at the head of the letter and to post it at Victoria Station.  In it she said she was starting on a tour abroad, but asked him to do what he could to trace the boy who had lain so grievously ill in the hospital at Colesberg.  Had he recovered after the Boers had taken Colesberg?  As a rumour had reached her that he had, and had even returned to England.  She wanted to know, and if they ever met again would tell him why.  Meanwhile if he got any news would he address it to her, care of Honoria Fraser, Queen Anne’s Mansions, St. James’s Park; as her own address would be quite uncertain for the present.  Or it would do quite as well if he wrote to Praddy; but not to his father, which might only needlessly agitate the old clergyman down in Wales, whom Vivie by an unexpected chance had come to know.

The first result of this letter a year later was a statement of Frank’s belief, almost certainty, that his acquaintance of the hospital had died and been buried while the Boers held possession of Colesberg; and that indeed was the utmost that was ever learnt about the end of the ill-fated son of Howel Vaughan Williams and Mary his wife, who were wedded in sunshine and with fair prospects of happiness in the early summer of 1874.

The new-born David Vavasour Williams having by November settled all these details, having arranged to pay the very modest rent of fifty-five pounds for his three rooms at Fig Tree Court, and twenty-five pounds a year to the housekeeper who was to “do” for him and another gentleman on the same floor—­a gentleman who was most anxious to be chummy with the new tenant of the opposite chambers but whose advances were firmly though civilly kept at bay—­having likewise passed his preliminary examination (since he could not avow that inside his clothes he was a third wrangler), having satisfied his two “godfathers” of the Bar that he was a fit person to recommend to the Benchers; having arranged to read with a barrister in chambers, and settled all other preliminaries of importance:  decided that he would pay an afternoon call on the Rossiters in Portland Place and see how the land lay there.