ELLIE. Othello was not telling lies.
MRS HUSHABYE. How do you know?
ELLIE. Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course, white, and very handsome, and—
MRS HUSHABYE. Ah! Now we're coming to it. Tell me all about him. I knew there must be somebody, or you'd never have been so miserable about Mangan: you'd have thought it quite a lark to marry him.
ELLIE [blushing vividly]. Hesione, you are dreadful. But I don't want to make a secret of it, though of course I don't tell everybody. Besides, I don't know him.
MRS HUSHABYE. Don't know him! What does that mean?
ELLIE. Well, of course I know him to speak to.
MRS HUSHABYE. But you want to know him ever so much more intimately, eh?
ELLIE. No, no: I know him quite—almost intimately.
MRS HUSHABYE. You don't know him; and you know him almost intimately. How lucid!