Her Cambridge reputation for learning, her eventual inheritance of eighty thousand pounds were unexpressed reasons for many a woman of good standing preferring to confide her affairs to the judgment of _Fraser and Warren_, in preference to dealing with male legal advisers, male land agents, men on the Stock Exchange, men in house property business.
So Beryl became in most respects a source of strength to Honoria Fraser, deprived for a time of the overt co-operation of her junior partner.
Beryl in the first few weeks of her stay evinced small interest in the departure of Vivien Warren and her reasons for going abroad.

She had a scheme of her own in which her architect would take a prominent part, for providing women--authoresses, actresses, or the wives of the newly enriched--with week-end cottages; the desire for which was born with the Twentieth century and fostered by the invention of motors and bicycles.

Cases before the firm for opinions on intricate legal problems Beryl was advised to place before the consideration of one of Honoria's friends, a law student, Mr.D.V.
Williams, who would shortly be back from his holiday and who had agreed to look in at the office from time to time and go through such papers as were set aside for him to read.

Beryl had remarked--without any intention behind it--on seeing some of his notes initialled V.W.that it was rum he should have the same initials as that Vivie girl whom she remembered at Newnham ...

who was "so silent and standoffish and easily shocked." But she noticed later that when Mr.Williams got to work his initials were really three and not two--D.V.W.