(David was on the point of saying—­he was so unstrung—­“Why we were at Newnham together.”  Then resolved to tell another whopper—­Indeed I am told there is a fascination in certain circumstances about lying—­and replied):  “Vivien Warren was my cousin.  She was a Vavasour on her mother’s side—­from South Wales—­and my mother was a Vavasour too—­” And as the disguised Vivie said this, some inkling came into her mind that there was a real relationship between Catharine Warren nee Vavasour and the Mary Vavasour who was David’s mother.  A spasm of joy flashed through her at the possibility of her story being in some slight degree true.

“I see,” said Rossiter, satisfied, and feeling now that the interview had lasted long enough and that there would be just time to glance at his assistant’s afternoon work before he dressed for dinner....

“Well, old chap.  Good-bye for the present.  Come often and see us and look upon me—­I must be fifteen years older than you are—­What, twenty-four?  Impossible!  You don’t look a day older than twenty—­in fact, if you hadn’t told me you’d been in South Africa—­However as I was saying, look on me as in loco parentis while you are in London.  I’ll show you the way out into the hall.  Shall they call you a cab?  No?  You’re quite right.  It’s a splendid night for January.  Where do you live?  Here, write it down in my address book.... ’7 Fig Tree Court, Temple’—­What a jolly address!  Are there fig trees in the Temple ... still?  P’raps descended from cuttings or layers the poor Templars brought from the Holy Land.”

David returned to Fig Tree Court and his studies of criminology.  But his body and mind thrilled with the experiences of the afternoon; and the musty records in works of repellent binding and close, unsympathetic print of nineteenth century forgery, poisoning, assaults-on-the-person, and cruelty-to-children cases for once failed to hold his close attention.  He sat all through the evening after a supper of bread and cheese and ginger beer in his snug, small room, furnished principally with well-filled book-shelves.  The room had a glowing fire and a green-shaded reading lamp.  He sat staring beyond his law books at visions, waking dreams that came and went.  The dangers of exposure that opened before him were in these dreams, but there were other mind-pictures that filled his life with a glow of colour.  How different from the drab horizons that encircled poor Vivie Warren less than a year ago!  Poor Vivie, whom even FitzJohn’s Avenue at Hampstead had rejected, who had long since been dropped—­no doubt on account of rumours concerning her mother—­by the few acquaintances she had made at Cambridge, who had parents living in South Kensington, Bayswater, and Bloomsbury.  Here was Portland Place receiving her in her guise as David Williams with open arms.  Men and women looked at her kindly, interestedly, and she could look back at them without that protective frown.