BENNET. I am. With the assistance of your aunt and such other members of your family as I consider can be trusted.
FANNY [for a moment she is speechless, then she bursts out]. That ends it! I shall tell him! I shall tell him this very moment. [She sweeps towards the door.]
BENNET. At this moment you will most likely find his lordship in his bath.
FANNY. I don’t care! Do you think—do you think for a moment that I’m going to allow myself—I, Lady Bantock, to be—[Her hand upon the door.] I shall tell him, and you’ll only have yourself to blame. He loves me. He loves me for myself. I shall tell him the whole truth, and ask him to give you all the sack.
BENNET. You’re not forgetting that you’ve already told him once who you were?
[It stops her. What she really did was to leave the marriage arrangements in the hands of her business manager, George P. Newte. As agent for a music-hall star, he is ideal, but it is possible that in answering Lord Bantock’s inquiries concerning Fanny’s antecedents he may not have kept strictly to the truth.]
FANNY. I never did. I’ve never told him anything about my family.
BENNET. Curious. I was given to understand it was rather a classy affair.
FANNY. I can’t help what other people may have done. Because some silly idiot of a man may possibly—[She will try a new tack. She leaves the door and comes to him.] Uncle, dear, wouldn’t it be simpler for you all to go away? He’s awfully fond of me. He’ll do anything I ask him. I could merely say that I didn’t like you and get him to pension you off. You and aunt could have a little roadside inn somewhere—with ivy.
BENNET. Seeing that together with the stables and the garden there are twenty-three of us—