ery little effect on continental public
opinion.

However Mrs. Warren in due course turned her two establishments into
hotels that gradually acquired a well-founded character of propriety
and were in time included amongst those recommended to quiet,
studious people by first class tourist agencies. Their names were
changed respectively from Hotel Leopold II to Hotel Edouard-Sept,
from The Homestead, Roquebrune, to Hotel du Royaume-Uni. Mrs. Warren
or Mme. Varennes retired completely from the management, but
arranged to retain for her own use the magnificently furnished
_appartement_ on the first floor of the Hotel Edouard-Sept at
Brussels, where Vivie had seen her in the late spring of 1909. She
still continued to receive a certain income from these two admirably
managed hostelries.

Constrained by Vivie she bestowed large donations on charitable and
educational institutions affecting the welfare of women and
established a fund of Ten thousand pounds for the promotion of Woman
Suffrage in Great Britain, which fund was to be at Vivie's
disposal. But even with these sacrifices to _bienseance_ she
remained a lady of considerable fortune.

She resisted however all invitations to make her home in England.
"No, dear; I've got used to foreign ways. I hate my own people;
they're such damned hypocrites; and the cooking don't suit my taste,
accustomed to the best."

But she gave up brandy except as a very occasional _chasse_ after
the postprandial coffee. She no longer dyed her hair and used very
little rouge and no scent but lavender. Her hair turned a warm white
colour, and dressed a la Pompadour made her look what she probably
was at heart--quite a decent sort.

CHAPTER XII

VIVIE RETURNS

Honoria Armstrong, faithful in friendship and purpose as few people
are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce,
blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband)
prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for
her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back
street; one of those houses--I doubt not, now tenanted by
millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof over
their heads--that remain over from the early nineteenth century,
when Kensington was emerging from a country village into villadom.
The broad, quiet road, named after our late dear Queen, has nothing
but these detached or semi-detached little _cottages ornes_,
one-storeyed vi