"Well - you see - Aunt Letty - the fact of the matter is - I can explain it all - I know I oughtn't to have done it - but it really seemed more of a lark than anything else.
If you'll just let me explain -"
"I am waiting for you to explain.
Who is this young woman?"
"Well, I met her at a cocktail party soon after I got demobbed.
We got talking and I said I was coming here and then - well, we thought it might be rather a good wheeze if I brought her along... You see, Julia, the real Julia was mad to go on the stage and Mother had seven fits at the idea - however, Julia got a chance to join a jolly good repertory company up in Perth or somewhere and she thought she'd give it a try - but she thought she'd keep Mum calm by letting Mum think that she was here with me studying to be a dispenser like a good little girl."
"I still want to know who this other young woman is."
Patrick turned with relief as Julia, cool and aloof, came into the room.
"The balloon's gone up," he said.
Julia raised her eyebrows.
Then, still cool, she came forward and sat down.
"O.K.," she said.
"That's that.
I suppose you're very angry?"
She studied Miss Blacklog's face with almost dispassionate interest.
"I should be if I were you."
"Who are you?"
Julia sighed.
"I think the moment's come when I make a clean breast of things. Here we go.
I'm one half of the Pip and Emma combination.
To be exact, my christened name is Emma Jocelyn Stamfordis - only Father soon dropped the Stamfordis.
I think he called himself de Courcy next. "My father and mother, let me tell you, split up about three years after Pip and I were born.
Each of them went their own way.
And they split us up.
I was Father's part of the loot.
He was a bad parent on the whole, though quite a charming one.
I had various desert spells of being educated in convents - when Father hadn't any money, or was preparing to engage in some particularly nefarious deal.
He used to pay the first term with every sign of affluence and then depart and leave me on the nuns' hands for a year or two.
In the intervals, he and I had some very good times together, moving in cosmopolitan society.
However, the war separated us completely.
I've no idea of what's happened to him.
I had a few adventures myself.
I was with the French Resistance for a time.
Quite exciting.
To cut a long story short, I landed up in London and began to think about my future.
I knew that Mother's brother with whom she'd had a frightful row, had died a very rich man.
I looked up his will to see if there was anything for me.
There wasn't - not directly, that is to say.
I made a few inquiries about his widow - it seemed she was quite gaga and kept under drugs and was dying by inches.
Frankly, it looked as though you were my best bet.
You were going to come into a hell of a lot of money and from all I could find out, you didn't seem to have anyone much to spend it on.
I'll be quite frank.
It occurred to me that if I could get to know you in a friendly kind of way, and if you took a fancy to me - well, after all, conditions have changed a bit, haven't they, since Uncle Randall died? I mean any money we ever had has been swept away in the cataclysm of Europe.
I thought you might pity a poor orphan girl, all alone in the world, and make her, perhaps, a small allowance."
"Oh, you did, did you?" said Miss Blacklog grimly.
"Yes.
Of course, I hadn't seen you then... I visualised a kind of sob stuff approach... Then, by a marvellous stroke of luck I met Patrick here - and he turned out to be your nephew or your cousin, or something. Well, that struck me as a marvellous chance.
I went bullheaded for Patrick and he fell for me in a most gratifying way.
The real Julia was all wet about this acting stuff and I soon persuaded her it was her duty to Art to go and fix herself up in some uncomfortable lodgings in Perth and train to be the new Sarah Bernhardt.
"You mustn't blame Patrick too much.