_Vivie_: "I don't care if I am, poor outlaw that I am! Every avenue to an honest and ambitious career seems closed to me, either because I am a woman or--in women's careers--the few that there are--because I am Kate Warren's daughter. _I_ am not to blame for my mother's misdeeds, yet I am being punished for them. That beast of a friend of yours--that filthy swine, George Crofts--set it about after I refused to marry him that I was 'Mrs. Warren's Daughter,' and the few nice people I knew from Cambridge days dropped me, all except Honoria and her mother." _Praed_: "Well, _I_ haven't dropped you. _I'll_ always stick by you" (observes that Vivie is trying to keep back her tears). "Vivie--_darling_--what do you want me to do? Why not marry me and spend half my income, take the shelter of my name--I'm an A.R.A. now--You needn't do more than keep house for me.... I'm rather a valetudinarian--dare say I shan't trouble you long--we could have a jolly good time before I went off with a heart attack--travel--study--write books together--" _Vivie_ (recovering herself): "Thanks, dear Praddy; you are a brick and I really--in a way--have quite got to love you. Except an office boy in Chancery Lane and W.T. Stead, I don't know any other decent man. But I'm not going to marry any one. I'm going to become Vavasour Williams--the name is rotten, but you must take what you can get. Williams is a quiet young man who only desires to be left alone to earn his living respectably at the Bar, and see there if he cannot redress the balance in the favour of women. But there is something you _could_ do for me, and it is for that I came to see you to-day--by the bye, we have both let our tea grow cold, but _for goodness' sake_ don't order any more on my account, or else your parlour-maid will be coming in and out and will see that I've been crying and you look flushed. What I wanted to ask was this--it's really very simple--_If Mr. Vavasour Williams, aged twenty-four, late in South Africa, once your pupil in architecture_ or scene painting or whatever it was--_gives you as a reference to character, you are to say the best you can of him_. And, by the bye, he will be calling to see you very shortly and you could lend further verisimilitude to your story by renewing acquaintance with him. You will find him very much improved. In every way he will do you credit. And what is more, if you don't repel him, he will come and see you much oftener than his cousin--I'm not ashamed to adopt her as a cousin--Vivie Warren could have done. Because Vivie, with her deplorable parentage, had your good name to think of, and visited you very seldom; whereas there could be raised _no_ objection from your parlour-maid if Mr. D.V. Williams came rather often to chat with you and ask your advice. Think it over, dear friend--Good-bye."