STRANGER.  That’s what you and your husband do, is it?

LADY PEMBURY (nodding).  Always.  For eight-and-twenty years.

STRANGER.  He tells you everything, eh?

LADY PEMBURY.  Well, not his official secrets, of course.  Everything else.

STRANGER.  Ha!  I wonder.

LADY PEMBURY.  But you have nobody, you say.  Well, you must share your good news with me.  Will you?

STRANGER.  Oh yes, you shall hear about it all right.

LADY PEMBURY.  That’s nice of you.  Well then, first question.  How much money is it going to be?

STRANGER (thoughtfully).  Well, I don’t quite know yet.  What do you say to a thousand a year?

LADY PEMBURY.  Oh, but what a lot!

STRANGER.  You think a thousand a year would be all right.  Enough to live on?

LADY PEMBURY.  For a bachelor, ample.

STRANGER.  For a bachelor.

LADY PEMBURY.  There’s no one dependent on you?

STRANGER.  Not a soul.  Only got one relation living.

LADY PEMBURY.  Oh?

STRANGER (enjoying a joke of his own).  A father.  But I shall not be supporting him.  Oh no.  Far from it.

LADY PEMBURY (a little puzzled by this, though the is not going to show it) Then I think you will be very rich with a thousand a year.

STRANGER.  Yes, that’s what I thought.  I should think it would stand a thousand.

LADY PEMBURY.  What is it?  An invention of some sort?

STRANGER.  Oh no, not an invention. . . .  A discovery.

LADY PEMBURY.  How proud she would have been!

STRANGER.  Who?

LADY PEMBURY.  Your wife if you had had one; your mother if she had been alive.

STRANGER (violently).  Look here, you leave my mother out of it.  My business is with Sir John——­ (sneeringly) Sir John Pembury, K.B.E.  If I want to talk about my mother, he and I will have a nice little talk together about her.  Yes, and about my father, too.

(LADY PEMBURY understands at last.  She stands up slowly, and looks at him, horrified.)

LADY PEMBURY.  What do you mean?

STRANGER.  A thousand a year.  You said so yourself.  Yes, I think it’s worth a thousand a year.

LADY PEMBURY.  Who is your father?  What’s your name?

STRANGER.  Didn’t I tell you I hadn’t got a name? (Bitterly) And if you want to know why, ask Sir John Pembury, K.B.E.

LADY PEMBURY (in a whisper).  He’s your father.

STRANGER.  Yes.  And I’m his loving son—­come to see him at last, after all these years.

LADY PEMBURY (hardly able to ask it).  How—­how old are you?

STRANGER.  Thirty.

LADY PEMBURY (sitting down on the sofa).  Oh, thank God!  Thank God!

STRANGER (upset by her emotion).  Look here, I didn’t want all this.  I ask you—­did I begin it?  It was you who kept asking questions.  I just came for a quiet talk with Sir John—­Father and Son talking together quietly—­talking about Son’s allowance.  A thousand a year.  What did you want to come into it for?