--I'm sure my father was an
Irish student for the priesthood at Louvain, and certain scraps of
information I got out of mother make me believe that _her_ mother
was a pretty Welsh girl from Cardiff, brought over to London Town by
some ship's captain and stranded there, on Tower Hill.

"However, I have still the whole scheme to work out and when I'm
ready to start on it--which will be very soon--I'll let you know.
Now, though I'd love to discuss all the other details, I mustn't
forget your mother will be wanting you--I wish _I_ had a mother to
tend--I wonder" (wistfully) "whether I was too hard on mine?

"D'you mind posting these letters as you go out? I shall change back
to Vivie Warren in a dressing gown, give myself a light supper, and
then put in two hours studying Latin and Norman French. Good night,
dearest!"

Two months after this conversation Vivie decided to pay a call on
an old friend of her mother's, Lewis Maitland Praed, if you want his
full name, a well-known architect, and one of the few male friends
of Catherine Warren who had not also been her lover. Why, he never
quite knew himself. When he first met her she was the boon
companion, the mistress--more or less, and unattached--of a young
barrister, a college friend of Praed's. Kate Warren at that time
called herself Kitty Vavasour; and on the strength of having done a
turn or two on the music halls considered herself an actress with a
right to a professional name. It was in this guise that the "Revd."
Samuel Gardner met her and had that six months' infatuation for her
which afterwards caused him so much disquietude; though it preceded
the taking of his ordination vows by quite a year, and his marriage
to his wife--much too good for him--in 1874. [The Revd. Sam, you may
remember, was the father of the scapegrace Frank who nearly captured
Vivie's young affections and had written from South Africa proposing
marriage at the opening of this story.]

Kate Vavasour in 1872 was an exceedingly pretty girl of nineteen or
twenty; showily dressed, and quick with her tongue. She was
good-natured and jolly, and though Praed himself was the essence of
refinement there was something about her reckless mirth and joy in
life--the immense relief of having passed from the sordid life of a
barmaid to this quasi-ladyhood--that enlisted his sympathies. Though
she was always somebody else's mistress until she developed
her special talent as a manageress of high-class houses