Warren's past, and regarded Vivie as an
outlaw--said he would try to communicate with her friends in England
and see if through the American Relief organization, funds could be
transmitted for their maintenance. She gave him the addresses of
Rossiter, Praed, and her mother's London bankers.
Vivie now tried to settle down to a life of usefulness. To increase
their resources she gave lessons in English to Belgians and even to
German officers. She offered herself to various groups of Belgian
ladies who had taken up such charities as the Germans permitted. She
also asked to be taken on as a Red Cross helper. But in all these
directions she had many snubs to meet and little encouragement.
Scandal had been busy with her name--the unhappy reputation of her
mother, the peculiar circumstances under which she had left England,
the two or three months shut up at Tervueren with Colonel von
Giesselin, and the very protection he now accorded her and her
mother at the Hotel Imperial. She felt herself looked upon almost as
a pariah, except among the poor of Brussels in the Quartier des
Marolles. Here she was only regarded as a kind Englishwoman,
unwearied in her efforts to alleviate suffering, mental and bodily.
And meantime, silence, a wall of silence as regarded
England--England which she was beginning to look upon as the
paradise from which she had been chased.
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