SCENE I.—A Drawing-room.
[Enter Lord Tinsel and the Earl of Rochdale.]
Tin. Refuse a lord! A saucy lady this.
I scarce can credit it.
Roch. She’ll change her mind.
My agent, Master Walter, is her guardian.
Tin. How can you keep that Hunchback in his office?
He mocks you.
Roch. He is useful. Never heed him.
My offer now do I present through him.
He has the title-deeds of my estates,
She’ll listen to their wooing. I must have her.
Not that I love her, but that all allow
She’s fairest of the fair.
Tin. Distinguished well!
’Twere most unseemly for a lord to love!—
Leave that to commoners! ’Tis vulgar—she’s
Betrothed, you tell me, to Sir Thomas Clifford?
Roch. Yes.
Tin. That a commoner should thwart a lord!
Yet not a commoner. A baronet
Is fish and flesh. Nine parts plebeian, and
Patrician in the tenth. Sir Thomas Clifford!
A man, they say, of brains! I abhor brains
As I do tools: they’re things mechanical.
So far are we above our forefathers
They to their brains did owe their titles, as
Do lawyers, doctors. We to nothing owe them,
Which makes us far the nobler.
Roch. Is it so?