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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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42 just a little older than you seem to be-and not quite so very alluring in appearance. In fact, if I may speak candidlyCEC Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid. GWEN Well, to speak with perfect candour, Cecily, I wish that you were fully forty-two, and more than usually plain for your age. Ernest has a strong, upright nature. He is the very soul of truth and honour. Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable. CEC I beg your pardon, Gwendolen, did you say Ernest? GWEN Yes. CEC Oh, but it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is my guardian. It is his brother-his elder brother. GWEN [Sitting down again.] Ernest never mentioned to me that he had a brother. CEC I am sorry to say they have not been on good terms for a long time. GWEN Ah! that accounts for it. And now that I think of it I have never heard any man mention his brother. The subject seems distasteful to most men. Cecily, you have lifted a load from my mind. I was growing almost anxious. It would have been terrible if any cloud had come across a friendship like ours, would it not? Of course you are quite, quite sure that it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is your guardian? CEC Quite sure. [A pause.] In fact, I am going to be his. GWEN [Enquiringly.] I beg your pardon? CEC [Rather shy and confidingly.] |
