A C T I I.
SCENE I. Sir George Touchwood's.
Enter Doricourt and Sir George.
Doricourt.
Married, ha! ha! ha! you, whom I heard in Paris say such things of the sex, are in London a married man.
Sir Geo. The sex is still what it has ever been since la petite morale banished substantial virtues; and rather than have given my name to one of your high-bred fashionable dames, I'd have crossed the line in a fire-ship, and married a Japanese.
Doric. Yet you have married an English beauty, yea, and a beauty born in high life.
Sir Geo. True; but she has a simplicity of heart and manners, that would have become the fair Hebrew damsels toasted by the Patriarchs.
Doric. Ha! ha! Why, thou art a downright matrimonial Quixote. My life on't, she becomes as mere a Town Lady in six months as though she had been bred to the trade.
Sir Geo. Common—common—(contemptuously). No, Sir, Lady Frances despises high life so much from the ideas I have given her, that she'll live in it like a salamander in fire.
Doric. Oh, that the circle dans la place Victoire could witness thy extravagance! I'll send thee off to St. Evreux this night, drawn at full length, and coloured after nature.
Sir Geo. Tell him then, to add to the ridicule, that Touchwood glories in the name of Husband; that he has found in one Englishwoman more beauty than Frenchmen ever saw, and more goodness than Frenchwomen can conceive.