_Vivie_: "I haven't heard _from_ her for two years, since I left her letters unanswered. But I hear _of_ her every now and again. No. Not through Crofts. I suppose you know--if you take any interest in that wretch--that since he married the American quakeress he took his name off the _Warren Hotels Company_ and sold out much of his interest. He is now living in great respectability, breeding race horses. They even say he has given up whiskey. He has got a son and has endowed six cots in a Children's hospital. No. I think it must be _mother_ who has notices posted to me, probably through that scoundrel, Bax Strangeways ... generally in the _London Argus_ and the _Vie-de-Paris_--cracking up the Warren Hotels in Brussels, Berlin, Buda-Pest and Roquebrune. _What_ a comedy!... "There's my Aunt Liz at Winchester--Mrs. Canon Burstall--won't know me--I'm too compromising. But I'm sure her money-bags have been filled at one time--perhaps are still--out of the profits on mother's 'Hotels.'..." _Norie_: "I didn't remember your aunt was married ... or rather I suppose I did, but thought she was a widow, real or _soi-disant_..." _Vivie_: "So she is, after four years of happy married life! My 'uncle' Canon Burstall--Oh what a screaming joke the whole thing is!... I doubt if he was aware he had a niece.... Don't you remember he was killed in the Alps last autumn?..." _Norie_: "I remember 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....