LOVELESS.
No, there you are wrong, Amanda; you should never bestow your pity upon those who take pains for your contempt: pity those whom nature abuses, never those who abuse nature.
Enter LORD FOPPINGTON.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Dear Loveless, I am your most humble servant.
LOVELESS.
My lord, I’m yours.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Madam, your ladyship’s very obedient slave.
LOVELESS.
My lord, this lady is a relation of my wife’s.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
[Salutes BERINTHIA.] The beautifullest race of people upon earth, rat me! Dear Loveless, I am overjoyed that you think of continuing here: I am, stap my vitals!—[To AMANDA.] For Gad’s sake, madam, how has your ladyship been able to subsist thus long, under the fatigue of a country life?
AMANDA.
My life has been very far from that, my lord; it has been a very quiet one.
LORD FOPPINGTON.
Why, that’s the fatigue I speak of, madam; for ’tis impossible to be quiet without thinking: now thinking is to me the greatest fatigue in the world.
AMANDA.
Does not your lordship love reading, then?