LYDIA No, upon my word.—She really carries on a kind of correspondence with him, under a feigned name though, till she chooses to be known to him:—but it is a Delia or a Celia, I assure you.
JULIA
Then, surely, she is now more indulgent to her niece.
LYDIA Quite the contrary. Since she has discovered her own frailty, she is become more suspicious of mine. Then I must inform you of another plague!—That odious Acres is to be in Bath to-day; so that I protest I shall be teased out of all spirits!
JULIA Come, come, Lydia, hope for the best—Sir Anthony shall use his interest with Mrs. Malaprop.
LYDIA But you have not heard the worst. Unfortunately I had quarrelled with my poor Beverley, just before my aunt made the discovery, and I have not seen him since, to make it up.
JULIA
What was his offence?
LYDIA Nothing at all!—But, I don't know how it was, as often as we had been together, we had never had a quarrel, and, somehow, I was afraid he would never give me an opportunity. So, last Thursday, I wrote a letter to myself, to inform myself that Beverley was at that time paying his addresses to another woman. I signed it your friend unknown, showed it to Beverley, charged him with his falsehood, put myself in a violent passion, and vowed I'd never see him more.
JULIA
And you let him depart so, and have not seen him since?
LYDIA 'Twas the next day my aunt found the matter out. I intended only to have teased him three days and a half, and now I've lost him for ever.
JULIA If he is as deserving and sincere as you have represented him to me, he will never give you up so. Yet consider, Lydia, you tell me he is but an ensign, and you have thirty thousand pounds.