SIR RANDLE. [_Blandly but uneasily._] My child! OTTOLINE. That's _it_! Child! Now that I've returned to you, I'm still a child--still an object for you to fix your hopes and expectations upon. The situation has slipped back, in your minds, pretty much to what it was in the old days in the Avenue Montaigne. You may protest that it isn't so, but it _is_. [_Attempting a laugh._] That's why my knees are shaking at this moment, and my spine's all of a jelly! [_She rises and goes to the chair at the writing-table and grips the chair-rail. The others follow her apprehensively with their eyes._] I--I'm afraid I'm about to disappoint you. LADY FILSON. H-how? SIR RANDLE. Disap-point us? OTTOLINE. [_Abruptly._] What's the time, Dad? SIR RANDLE. [_Looking at a clock standing on a commode against the wall on the right._] Twenty minutes past eleven. OTTOLINE. He--he will be here at half-past. Don't be angry. I've asked him to come--to explain his position clearly to you and mother with regard to me. There's to be nothing underhand--_rien de secret_! LADY FILSON. A-asked whom? OTTOLINE. [_Throwing her head back._] Ho! You'll think I'm ushering in an endless string of lovers this morning! I promise you this is the last. SIR RANDLE. _Who_ is coming? OTTOLINE. [_Sitting at the writing-table and, her elbows on the table, supporting her chin on her fists._] Mr. Mackworth. LADY FILSON. [_After a pause._] Mackworth? OTTOLINE. Philip Mackworth. LADY FILSON. [_Dully._] Isn't he the journalist man you--you carried on with once, in Paris? OTTOLINE. What an expression, mother! Well--yes. SIR RANDLE. [_Simply._] Good God! OTTOLINE. He doesn't write for the papers any longer. LADY FILSON. W-what----? OTTOLINE. A novelist chiefly. LADY FILSON. [_Faintly._] Oh! SIR RANDLE. Successful? OTTOLINE. It depends on what you call success. SIR RANDLE. _I_ call success what everybody calls success. BERTRAM. [_Rising, stricken._] There are novelists and novelists, I mean t'say. OTTOLINE. Don't imagine that I am apologizing for him, please, in the slightest degree; but no, he _hasn't_ been successful up to the present, in the usual acceptation of the term. LADY FILSON.