Molyneux: Which will be a strain, my poor child, as you will seldom be reminded of it.
Tim: Except when you are staying with Ann.
Selina: I am afraid that, however virtuous I may become, I shall never be as charming as Ann.
Mrs. Martineau (acidly): Not in Tim’s eyes.
Lord William: Let me beg you, my dear, not to regard Tim as representative of his sex. He is a knight errant. He puts women on a pedestal.
Molyneux: A gallant form of shelving.
Mrs. Martineau: He divides the world into saints and cocottes, and, as there are many who fall between the two stools, they are disposed of as “children of nature.”
Tim: Come!
Mrs. Martineau: You would be surprised, Selina, at Tim’s child of nature. She can powder and paint, languish and pounce, but, if she was never a saint and is not yet in the gutter, we are forced to accept her as a pure, wild creature, trapped in our horrible society.
[They laugh.