quiet place where we can
talk over everything to our heart's content?"

_Mrs. Warren_: "Not a bad idea. Do me a lot of good. I was feeling
awfully down, Vivie, when you came. I wasn't altogether taken aback
at your coming, dearie, 'cos Praddy had given me a kind of a hint
you might turn up. But somehow, though everything goes well in
business--we seldom had so busy a time as during this last
Humanitarian Congress of the Powers--all the diplomats came
here--mostly the old ones, the old and respectable--oh we _all_ like
respectability--yet I never 'ad such low spirits. My gals used to
come in here and find me cryin' as often as not.... 'Comment,
Madame,' they used to say, 'pourquoi pleurez vous? Tout va si bien!
_Quelle_ clientele, et pas chiche'--I suppose you understand French?
However about this trip to the country, look on it as _settled_.
I'll pack up now and away we go in the afternoon. And not to any of
your measly Hotels or village inns. Why I've got me _own_ country
place and me _own_ auto. Villa de Beau-sejour, a mile or so beyond
the lovely beech woods of Tervueren. Ain't so far from Louvain, so's
I can send you on there one day--Ah! There's some one you'd like to
see in Louvain, if I mistake not! You always was one for findin' out
things, and maybe I'll tell you more, now you've come back to me,
than what I'd a done with you standing up so stiff and proud and me
unfit to take up the hem of your skirt.... How I do ramble. Suppose
it's old age comin' on" (shudders). "About this Villa de Beau-sejour
... It was once a farm house, and even now it's the farm where I get
me eggs and milk and butter an' the fruit and vegetables for this
hotel. _He_ gave it to me--you know whom I mean by '_He_'? ... don't
do to talk too loud in a place like this.... They say he's pretty
bad just now, not likely to live much longer. I was his mistress
once, years ago--at least I was more a confidante than anything
else. _How_ he used to laugh at my stories! 'Que tu es une
drolesse,' he used to say. I never used to mince matters and we were
none the worse for that. Bless you, he wasn't as bad as they painted
him, 'long of all this fuss about the blacks. As I say, he gave me
the Villa de Beau-sejour, and used to say if I behaved myself he
might some day make me 'Baronne de Beau-sejour.' How'd you have
liked that, eh? Sort of morganatic Queen? I lay I'd have put some
good management into the runnin' of those places. Aie! How they used
to