The first act opens in Lady Harriet's boudoir. The second scene of this act is the fair at Richmond. The scene of the second act is laid in Plunkett's farmhouse; that of the third in a forest near Richmond. The fourth act opens in the farmhouse and changes to Lady Harriet's park.
Act I. Scene 1. The Lady Harriet yawned. It was dull even at the court of Queen Anne.
"Your Ladyship," said Nancy, her sprightly maid, "here are flowers from Sir Tristan."
"Their odour sickens me," was her ladyship's weary comment.
"And these diamonds!" urged Nancy, holding up a necklace for her mistress to view.
"They hurt my eyes," said her ladyship petulantly.
The simple fact is the Lady Harriet, like many others whose pleasures come so easily that they lack zest, was bored. Even the resourceful Nancy, a prize among maids, was at last driven to exclaim:
"If your ladyship only would fall in love!"
But herein, too, Lady Harriet had the surfeit that creates indifference. She had bewitched every man at court only to remain unmoved by their protestations of passion. Even as Nancy spoke, a footman announced the most persistent of her ladyship's suitors, Sir Tristan of Mikleford, an elderly cousin who presumed upon his relationship to ignore the rebuffs with which she met his suit. Sir Tristan was a creature of court etiquette. His walk, his gesture, almost his speech itself were reduced to rule and method. The stiffness that came with age made his exaggerated manner the more ridiculous. In fact he was the incarnation of everything that the Lady Harriet was beginning to find intolerably tedious.
"Most respected cousin, Lady in Waiting to Her Most Gracious Majesty," he began sententiously, and would have added all her titles had she not cut him short with an impatient gesture, "will your ladyship seek diversion by viewing the donkey races with me today?"