India, and a dear little old-fashioned aunt (really a great-aunt)
with whom she lived at Notting Hill, who wrote children's books and
who, it appeared, had once written a Christmas pantomime. It was
quite an artistic home--not on the scale of Mrs. Alsager's (to
compare the smallest things with the greatest!) but intensely refined
and honourable. Wayworth went so far as to hint that it would be
rather nice and human on Mrs. Alsager's part to go there--they would
take it so kindly if she should call on them. She had acted so often
on his hints that he had formed a pleasant habit of expecting it: it
made him feel so wisely responsible about giving them. But this one
appeared to fall to the ground, so that he let the subject drop.
Mrs. Alsager, however, went yet once more to the "Legitimate," as he
found by her saying to him abruptly, on the morrow: "Oh, she'll be
very good--she'll be very good." When they said "she," in these
days, they always meant Violet Grey, though they pretended, for the
most part, that they meant Nona Vincent.

"Oh yes," Wayworth assented, "she wants so to!"

Mrs. Alsager was silent a moment; then she asked, a little
inconsequently, as if she had come back from a reverie: "Does she
want to VERY much?"

"Tremendously--and it appears she has been fascinated by the part
from the first."

"Why then didn't she say so?"

"Oh, because she's so funny."