Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and Lady Johnston to the front seats..." (I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter, but it was his little golden-haired god-son she meant.) You shall have your general back safe from the wars, with a wound that gives only honour, a reasonable number of well-earned decorations, and a reputation for rather better strategy than Aldershot generally produces; and he shall live out his wholesome life alongside yours, still dispensing happiness, even under a Labour Government: till, as Burton used to wind up his Arabian Nights love stories, "there came to them the Destroyer of delight and the Sunderer of societies." Honoria acted towards the Suffrage movement somewhat as in older-fashioned days of Second Empire laxity well-to-do people evaded military service under conscription by paying a substitute to take their place in the fighting line.

On account of her husband, and the children she had just had or was going to have, she did not throw herself into the physical struggle; but she still continued out of her brother's ear-marked money to subsidize the cause.

Rather regretfully, she looked on from a motor, a balcony, a front window or the safe plinth of some huge statue, whilst her comrades, with less to risk physically and socially, matched their strength of will, their trained muscles, their agility, astuteness and feminine charm (seldom without some effect) against the brute force and imperturbability of the Police.
The struggle waxed hot and fierce in the early months of 1910.

Vivie held herself somewhat in the background also, not wishing to strike publicly and effectively until she was sure for what principle she endangered her life and liberty.

Nevertheless she became a resource of rising importance to the Suffrage cause.