nd the dress you have on your back. Don't turn up your nose at business,
Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and Girtons be without it?

VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself] Take care. I know what this
business is.

CROFTS [starting, with a suppressed oath] Who told you?

VIVIE. Your partner. My mother.

CROFTS [black with rage] The old--

VIVIE. Just so.

[He swallows the epithet and stands for a moment swearing and raging
foully to himself. But he knows that his cue is to be sympathetic. He
takes refuge in generous indignation.]

CROFTS. She ought to have had more consideration for you. _I'd_ never
have told you.

VIVIE. I think you would probably have told me when we were married: it
would have been a convenient weapon to break me in with.

CROFTS [quite sincerely] I never intended that. On my word as a
gentleman I didn't.

[Vivie wonders at him. Her sense of the irony of his protest cools and
braces her. She replies with contemptuous self-possession.]

VIVIE. It does not matter. I suppose you understand that when we leave
here today our acquaintance ceases.

CROFTS. Why? Is it for helping your mother?

VIVIE. My mother was a very poor woman who had no reasonable choice but
to do as she did. You were a rich gentleman; and you did the same for
the sake of 35 per cent. You are a pretty common sort of scoundrel, I
think. That is my opinion of you.

CROFTS [after a stare: not at all displeased, and much more at his ease
on these frank terms than on their former ceremonious ones] Ha! ha! ha!
ha! Go it, little missie, go it: it doesn't hurt me and it amuses you.
Why the devil shouldn't I invest my money that way? I take the interest
on my capital like other people: I hope you don't think I dirty my own
hands with the work.

Come! you wouldn't refuse the acquaintance of my mother's cousin the Duke
of Belgravia because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways.
You wouldn't cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among
their tenants. Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well,
that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent out of
a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough
to live on. How d'ye suppose they manage when they have no family to
fall back on? Ask your mother. And do you expect me to turn my back on
35 per cent when all the rest are pocketing what