FANNY. Oh, don’t begin quoting Scripture. I want to discuss the thing sensibly. Don’t you see it can’t be done? I can’t be anybody else than myself. I don’t want to.
BENNET. My girl, you’ve got to be. Root and branch, inside and outside, before you’re fit to be Lady Bantock, mother of the Lord Bantocks that are to be, you’ve got to be a changed woman.
A pause.
FANNY. And it’s going to be your job, from beginning to end—yours and the rest of you. What I wear and how I look is Jane’s affair. My prayers will be for what Aunt Susannah thinks I stand in need of. What I eat and drink and say and do you will arrange for me. And when you die, Cousin Simeon, I suppose, will take your place. And when Aunt Susannah dies, it will merely be a change to Aunt Amelia. And if Jane ever dies, Honoria will have the dressing and the lecturing of me. And so on and so on, world without end, for ever and ever, Amen.
BENNET. Before that time, you will, I shall hope, have learnt sufficient sense to be grateful to us. [He goes out.]
FANNY [she turns—walks slowly back towards the tea-table. Halfway she pauses, and leaning over the back of a chair regards in silence for a while the portrait of the first Lady Bantock]. I do wish I could tell what you were saying.
The door opens. The Misses Wetherell come in. They wear the same frocks that they wore in the first act. They pause. Fanny is still gazing at the portrait.
THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. Don’t you notice it, dear?
THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL. Yes. There really is.
THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. It struck me the first day. [To Fanny, who has turned] Your likeness, dear, to Lady Constance. It’s really quite remarkable.