SIR RANDLE.

[_To_ PHILIP, _majestically._] Before you embark upon your explanation,
permit me to define _my_ position--mine and Lady Filson's. [PHILIP
_nods._] I am going to make a confession to you; and I should like to
feel that I am making it as one gentleman to another. [PHILIP _nods
again._] Mr. Mackworth, Lady Filson and I are ambitious people. Not for
ourselves. For ourselves, all we desire is rest and retirement--[_closing
his eyes_] if it were possible, obscurity. But where our children are
concerned, it is different; and, to be frank--I _must_ be frank--we had
hoped that, in the event of Ottoline remarrying, she would contract
such a marriage as is commonly described as brilliant.

PHILIP.

[_Dryly._] Such a marriage as her marriage to Monsieur de Chaumie, for
example.

SIR RANDLE.

[_Closing his eyes._] _De mortuis_, Mr. Mackworth! I must decline----

PHILIP.

I merely wished, as a basis of argument, to get at your exact
interpretation of brilliancy.

SIR RANDLE.

[_Dismissing the point with a wave of the hand._] It is easy for you,
therefore, as you have already intimated, to judge what are our
sensations at receiving my daughter's communication.

PHILIP.

[_Nodding._] They are distinctly disagreeable.

SIR RANDLE.

[_Conscientiously._] They are--I won't exaggerate--I mustn't
exaggerate--they are not far removed from dismay.

LADY FILSON.

Utter dismay.

SIR RANDLE.

[_Shifting his chair--to_ PHILIP.] I learn--I learn from Ottoline that
you have forsaken the field of journalism, Mr. Mackworth, and now
devote yourself exclusively to creative work? [_Another nod from_
PHILIP.] But you have not--to use my daughter's phrase--up to the
present--er----

PHILIP.

[_Nursing his leg._] Please go on.

SIR RANDLE.

You have not been eminently successful?

PHILIP.

Not yet. Not with the wide public. No; not yet.

SIR RANDLE.

Forgive me--any private resources?

PHILIP.

None worth mentioning. Two-hundred-a-year, left me by an old aunt.

LADY FILSON.

[_Un