Re-enter Lucy.

Lucy. O Lud! ma’am, they are both coming upstairs.

Lyd. Well, I’ll not detain you, coz.—Adieu, my dear Julia. I’m sure you are in haste to send to Faulkland.—There, through my room you’ll find another staircase.

Jul. Adieu!

[Embraces Lydia, and exit.

Lyd. Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick, quick!— Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilet—throw Roderick Random into the closet—put The Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man—thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa—cram Ovid behind the bolster—there—put The Man of Feeling into your pocket—so, so—now lay Mrs. Chapone in sight, and leave Fordyce’s Sermons open on the table.

Lucy. O burn it, ma’am! the hair-dresser has torn away as far as Proper Pride.

Lyd. Never mind—open at Sobriety.—Fling me Lord Chesterfields Letters.—Now for ’em.

[Exit Lucy.

Enter Mrs. Malaprop, and Sir Anthony Absolute.

Mrs. Mal. There, Sir Anthony, there sits the deliberate simpleton who wants to disgrace her family, and lavish herself on a fellow not worth a shilling.

Lyd. Madam, I thought you once——

Mrs. Mal. You thought, miss! I don’t know any business you have to think at all—thought does not become a young woman. But the point we would request of you is, that you will promise to forget this fellow—to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

Lyd. Ah, madam! our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget.

Mrs. Mal. But I say it is, miss; there is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I’m sure I have as much forgot your poor dear uncle as if he had never existed—and I thought it my duty so to do; and let me tell you, Lydia, these violent memories don’t become a young woman.

Sir Anth. Why sure she won’t pretend to remember what she’s ordered not!—ay, this comes of her reading!

Lyd. What crime, madam, have I committed, to be treated thus?

Mrs. Mal. Now don’t attempt to extirpate yourself from the matter; you know I have proof controvertible of it.—But tell me, will you promise to do as you’re bid? Will you take a husband of your friends’ choosing?

Lyd. Madam, I must tell you plainly, that had I no preferment for any one else, the choice you have made would be my aversion.

Mrs. Mal. What business have you, miss, with preference and aversion? They don’t become a young woman; and you ought to know, that as both always wear off, ’tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion. I am sure I hated your poor dear uncle before marriage as if he’d been a blackamoor—and yet, miss, you are sensible what a wife I made!—and when it pleased Heaven to release me from him, ’tis unknown what tears I shed!— But suppose we were going to give you another choice, will you promise us to give up this Beverley?