VIVIE. Yes: goodbye. Come: don’t let us make a useless scene: you understand perfectly well. Sir George Crofts has told me the whole business.
MRS WARREN [angrily] Silly old—[She swallows an epithet, and then turns white at the narrowness of her escape from uttering it].
VIVIE. Just so.
MRS WARREN. He ought to have his tongue cut out. But I thought it was ended: you said you didn’t mind.
VIVIE [steadfastly] Excuse me: I do mind.
MRS WARREN. But I explained—
VIVIE. You explained how it came about. You did not tell me that it is still going on [She sits].
[Mrs Warren, silenced for a moment, looks forlornly at Vivie, who waits, secretly hoping that the combat is over. But the cunning expression comes back into Mrs Warren’s face; and she bends across the table, sly and urgent, half whispering.]
MRS WARREN. Vivie: do you know how rich I am?
VIVIE. I have no doubt you are very rich.