servant.'tis her ladyship sir--she always leaves her chair at the milliner's in the next street.
surface.stay--stay--draw that screen before the window--that will do--my opposite neighbour is a maiden lady of so curious a temper!--[servant draws the screen and exit.]
i have a difficult hand to play in this affair--lady teazle as lately suspected my views on maria--but she must by no means be let into that secret, at least till i have her more in my power.
enter lady teazle
lady teazle.what[!] sentiment in soliloquy--have you been very impatient now?--o lud! don't pretend to look grave--i vow i couldn't come before----surface.o madam[,] punctuality is a species of constancy, a very unfashionable quality in a lady.
lady teazle.upon my word you ought to pity me, do you now sir peter is grown so ill-tempered to me of late! and so jealous! of charles too that's the best of the story isn't it?
surface.i am glad my scandalous friends keep that up.[aside.]
lady teazle.i am sure i wish he would let maria marry him--and then perhaps he would be convinced--don't you--mr.surface?
surface.indeed i do not.--[aside.] o certainly i do--for then my dear lady teazle would also be convinced how wrong her suspicions were of my having any design on the silly girl----lady teazle.well--well i'm inclined to believe you--besides i really never could perceive why she should have so any admirers.
surface.o for her fortune--nothing else--lady teazle.i believe so for tho' she is certainly very pretty--yet she has no conversation in the world--and is so grave and reserved--that i declare i think she'd have made an excellent wife for sir peter.--surface.so she would.
lady teazle.then--one never hears her speak ill of anybody--which you know is mighty dull--surface.yet she doesn't want understanding--lady teazle.no more she does--yet one is always disapointed when one hears [her] speak--for though her eyes have no kind of meaning in them--she very seldom talks nonsense.