ARNOLD. No! he rang me up. It's a mercy he had a telephone put in the cottage. It would have been a pretty kettle of fish if he'd just walked in. ELIZABETH. Did you tell him Lady Catherine was coming? ARNOLD. Of course not. I was flabbergasted to know he was here. And then I thought we'd better talk it over first. ELIZABETH. Is he coming along here? ARNOLD. Yes. He suggested it, and I couldn't think of any excuse to prevent him. TEDDIE. Couldn't you put the other people off? ARNOLD. They're coming by car. They may be here any minute. It's too late to do that. ELIZABETH. Besides, it would be beastly. ARNOLD. I knew it was silly to have them here. Elizabeth insisted. ELIZABETH. After all, she _is_ your mother, Arnold. ARNOLD. That meant precious little to her when she--went away. You can't imagine it means very much to me now. ELIZABETH. It's thirty years ago. It seems so absurd to bear malice after all that time. ARNOLD. I don't bear malice, but the fact remains that she did me the most irreparable harm. I can find no excuse for her. ELIZABETH. Have you ever tried to? ARNOLD. My dear Elizabeth, it's no good going over all that again. The facts are lamentably simple. She had a husband who adored her, a wonderful position, all the money she could want, and a child of five. And she ran away with a married man. ELIZABETH. Lady Porteous is not a very attractive woman, Arnold. [_To ANNA._] Do you know her? ANNA. [_Smiling._] "Forbidding" is the word, I think. ARNOLD. If you're going to make little jokes about it, I have nothing more to say. ANNA. I'm sorry, Arnold. ELIZABETH. Perhaps your mother couldn't help herself--if she was in love? ARNOLD. And had no sense of honour, duty, or decency? Oh, yes, under those circumstances you can explain a great deal. ELIZABETH. That's not a very pretty way to speak of your mother. ARNOLD. I can't look on her as my mother. ELIZABETH. What you can't get over is that she didn't think of you. Some of us are more mother and some of us more woman. It gives me a little thrill when I think that she loved that man so much. She sacrificed her name, her position, and her child to him. ARNOLD. You really can't expect the said child to have any great affection for the mother who treated him like that. ELIZABETH. No, I don't think I do. But I think it's a pity after all these years that you shouldn't be friends. ARNOLD. I wonder if you realise what it was to grow up under the shadow of that horrible scandal. Everywhere, at school, and at Oxford, and afterwards in London, I was always the son of Lady Kitty Cheney. Oh, it was cruel, cruel! ELIZABETH. Yes, I know, Arnold. It was beastly for you.