RACHEL Why, Lord Ravensbane, your pulse. Really, if I am cruel, you are quite heartless. I declare I can’t feel your heart beat at all.
RAVENSBANE Ah! mistress, that is because I have just lost it.
RACHEL [Archly.] Where?
RAVENSBANE [Faintly.] Dickon, my pipe!
RACHEL Alas! my lord, are you ill?
DICKON [Restoring the lighted pipe to Ravensbane, speaks aside.] Pardon me, sweet young lady, I must confide to you that his lordship’s heart is peculiarly responsive to his emotions. When he feels very ardently, it quite stops. Hence the use of his pipe.
RACHEL Oh! Is smoking, then, necessary for his heart?
DICKON Absolutely—to equilibrate the valvular palpitations. Without his pipe—should his lordship experience, for instance, the emotion of love—he might die.
RACHEL You alarm me!
DICKON But this is for you only, Mistress Rachel. We may confide in you?