there is! Listen! Oh! that is my husband’s voice! He is coming in! Save me! Oh, it’s some plot! You have sent for him.
[Voices outside.]
mrs. erlynne
Silence! I’m here to save you, if I can. But I fear it is too late! There! [Points to the curtain across the window.] The first chance you have, slip out, if you ever get a chance!
lady windermere
But you?
·84· mrs. erlynne
Oh! never mind me. I’ll face them.
[Lady Windermere hides herself behind the curtain.]
lord augustus
[Outside.] Nonsense, dear Windermere, you must not leave me!
mrs. erlynne
Lord Augustus! Then it is I who am lost! [Hesitates for a moment, then looks round and sees door R., and exit through it.]
[Enter Lord Darlington, Mr. Dumby, Lord Windermere, Lord Augustus Lorton, and Mr. Cecil Graham.
dumby
What a nuisance their turning us out of the club at this hour! It’s only two o’clock. [Sinks into a chair.] The lively part of the evening is only just beginning. [Yawns and closes his eyes.]
lord windermere
It is very good of you, Lord Darlington, allowing Augustus to force our company on you, but I’m afraid I can’t stay long.
lord darlington
Really! I am so sorry! You’ll take a cigar, won’t you?
·85· lord windermere
Thanks! [Sits down.]
lord augustus
[To Lord Windermere.] My dear boy, you must not dream of going. I have a great deal to talk to you about, of demmed importance, too. [Sits down with him at L. table.]
cecil graham
Oh! We all know what that is! Tuppy can’t talk about anything but Mrs. Erlynne!
lord windermere
Well, that is no business of yours, is it, Cecil?
cecil graham
None! That is why it interests me. My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people’s.
lord darlington
Have something to drink, you fellows. Cecil, you’ll have a whisky and soda?
cecil graham
Thanks. [Goes to table with Lord Darlington.] Mrs. Erlynne looked very handsome to-night, didn’t she?
·86· lord darlington
I am not one of her admirers.
cecil graham
I usen’t to be, but I am now. Why! she actually made me introduce her to poor dear Aunt Caroline. I believe she is going to lunch there.
lord darlington
[In surprise.] No?
cecil graham
She is, really.
lord darlington
Excuse me, you fellows. I’m going away to-morrow. And I have to write a few letters. [Goes to writing table and sits down.]
dumby
Clever woman, Mrs. Erlynne.
cecil graham
Hallo, Dumby! I thought you were asleep.
dumby
I am, I usually am!
lord augustus
A very clever woman. Knows perfectly well ·87· what a demmed fool I am—knows it as well as I do myself.
[Cecil Graham comes towards him laughing.]
Ah! you may laugh, my boy, but it is a great thing to come across a woman who thoroughly understands one.
dumby
It is an awfully dangerous thing. They always end by marrying one.
cecil graham
But I thought, Tuppy, you were never going to see her again. Yes! you told me so yesterday evening at the club. You said you’d heard——
[Whispering to him.]
lord augustus
Oh, she’s explained that.
cecil graham
And the Wiesbaden affair?
lord augustus
She’s explained that too.
dumby
And her income, Tuppy? Has she explained that?
·88· lord augustus
[In a very serious voice.] She’s going to explain that to-morrow.
[Cecil Graham goes back to C. table.
dumby
Awfully commercial, women now-a-days. Our grandmothers threw their caps over the mills, of course, but, by Jove, their granddaughters only throw their caps over mills that can raise the wind for them.
lord augustus
You want to make her out a wicked woman. She is not!
cecil graham
Oh! Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them.
lord augustus
[Puffing a cigar.] Mrs. Erlynne has a future before her.
dumby
Mrs. Erlynne has a past before her.
lord augustus
I prefer women with a past. They’re always so demmed amusing to talk to.
·89·
