r your going down to see your aunt after you
broke off relations with your mother in--in--1897...?"

_Vivie_: "Yes. I wanted to see how the land lay and not judge any
one unfairly. Besides I--I--didn't like being dependent entirely on
you--at that time--for support: and Praed was in Italy. I knew that
Aunt Liz, like mother, was illegitimate--and guessed she had once
made her living in the higher walks of prostitution--she was a
stockbroker's mistress at one time--. But she had married and
settled down at Winchester ... She met her Canon--the Alpine
traveller ... in Switzerland. I felt if she took no money from
mother's 'houses,' I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any
rate have _some_ kith and kin to go to. She had no children....
But--I must have told you all this years ago?--she almost pushed me
out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from
the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I
was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and
buried me in the garden of the Canonry....

"I've examined the business of the _Warren Hotels Ltd._ since then,
but it's a private company, and all its doings are so cleverly
concealed.... Aunt Liz doesn't figure amongst the shareholders any
more than Crofts does. That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now,
and mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly
didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of
under L4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had
her portrait in the _Queen_ because she gave a large subscription to
the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of
Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should
judge, from certain indications. I expect _she_ will retire from the
'Hotels,' some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with
her money.... She'll have _her_ portrait in the _Queen_ some day as
a Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society!... And yet she's
such a gambler and a rake that she _may_ get pinched over the White
Slave traffic.... I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the
other day, fearing every moment to see mother's name mixed up with
it, or else an allusion to her 'Hotels.' But I fancy she has been
wise enough--indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned
her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her
chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the