I've got a dear old mater down in Kent--Margate, don't you know--my dad's still alive, Vivie!--and she'd have been awfully cut up at hearing her son had been spending the night in a police cell and was goin' to be fined for rioting, only fortunately the Home Secretary said we weren't to be punished....

But Professor Rossiter's coming on the scene was a grand thing.

Besides being an M.P., I needn't tell _you_, Mrs.Rossiter, he has a world-wide reputation.

Oh, we read your books, sir, out in South Africa, _I_ can tell you--Well--er--and here we are--and I'm monopolizing the conversation." Vivie sat opposite her old lover, and near to the man who loved her now with such ill-concealed passion that his hand trembled for her very proximity.

She felt strangely elated, strangely gay, at times inclined to laugh as she caught sight of her bruised and puffy face in an opposite mirror, yet happy in the knowledge that notwithstanding the thirteen years of separation, her repeated rejection of his early love, her battered appearance, Frank still felt tenderly towards her, still remembered the timbre of her voice.
Her mouth was too sore and swollen to make eating very pleasant.