Letitia Blandish.
There's phrase—there's a period—match it, if you can.
Blandish. Not I, indeed: I am working upon a quite different plan: but, in the name of the old father of adulation, to whom is that perfect phrase addressed?
Mrs. Blandish. To one worth the pains, I can tell you—Miss Alscrip.
Blandish. What, sensibility to Miss Alscrip! My dear sister, this is too much, even in your own way: had you run changes upon her fortune, stocks, bonds, and mortgages; upon Lord Gayville's coronet at her feet, or forty other coronets, to make footballs of if she pleased,—it would have been plausible; but the quality you have selected——
Mrs. Blandish. Is one she has no pretensions to; therefore the flattery is more persuasive—that's my maxim.
Blandish. And mine also, but I don't try it quite so high—Sensibility to Miss Alscrip! you might as well have applied it to her uncle's pig-iron, from which she derives her first fifty thousand; or the harder heart of the old usurer, her father, from which she expects the second. But come, [Rings.] to the business of the morning.
Enter Prompt.
Here, Prompt—send out the chairman with the billets and cards.—Have you any orders, madam?