MALONE. [grinning] D'y' think they'll be able to get that done before I buy the house—or rather the abbey? They're both abbeys.
VIOLET. [putting that aside rather impatiently] Oh, well, let us talk sense, Mr Malone. You must feel that we haven't been talking sense so far.
MALONE. I can't say I do. I mean all I say.
VIOLET. Then you don't know Hector as I do. He is romantic and faddy—he gets it from you, I fancy—and he wants a certain sort of wife to take care of him. Not a faddy sort of person, you know.
MALONE. Somebody like you, perhaps?
VIOLET. [quietly] Well, yes. But you cannot very well ask me to undertake this with absolutely no means of keeping up his position.
MALONE. [alarmed] Stop a bit, stop a bit. Where are we getting to? I'm not aware that I'm asking you to undertake anything.
VIOLET. Of course, Mr Malone, you can make it very difficult for me to speak to you if you choose to misunderstand me.
MALONE. [half bewildered] I don't wish to take any unfair advantage; but we seem to have got off the straight track somehow.
Straker, with the air of a man who has been making haste, opens the little gate, and admits Hector, who, snorting with indignation, comes upon the lawn, and is making for his father when Violet, greatly dismayed, springs up and intercepts him. Straker doer not wait; at least he does not remain visibly within earshot.