FANNY. Yes, mamma.
MRS. P. (aside). I thought so. (Aloud.) Is he aware of your somewhat foolish partiality?
FANNY. I think so. He’ll tell you why! Whenever he used to call, and we happened to be sitting side by side—I mean you and I, mamma—I noticed that he always kept his eye fixed on us, and it always made me blush so.
MRS. P. (aside). Poor simple child. She flatters herself that it was on her that Vicessimus’s enamoured glances were riveted.
FANNY. And don’t you recollect the last time he took us to the theatre, how attentive, how polite he was to you?
MRS. P. Yes. I remember he brought me three oranges and an ounce of acidulated drops into our box.
FANNY. And if you only had heard him just now, when I told him how shamefully you had been treated here! “What!” he exclaimed, turning quite red in the face and tearing his hair out in handfuls. “What! Dare to offer such an affront to so good, so amiable, so excellent a woman—a woman born to command, born to be beloved!”
MRS. P. Did he?
Enter JOSEPH at R. H.