LADY FREDERICK.
My dear, I've been giving it you for the last half-hour.
MERESTON.
How?
LADY FREDERICK.
You don't for a moment suppose I should have let you into those horrible mysteries of my toilette if I'd had any intention of marrying you? Give me credit for a certain amount of intelligence and good feeling. I should have kept up the illusion, at all events till after the honeymoon.
MERESTON.
Are you going to refuse me?
LADY FREDERICK.
Aren't you rather glad?
MERESTON.
No, no, no.
LADY FREDERICK.
[_Putting her arm through his._] Now let us talk it over sensibly.
You're a very nice boy, and I'm awfully fond of you. But you're twenty-two, and heaven only knows my age. You see, the church in which I was baptized was burnt down the year I was born, so I don't know how old I am.
MERESTON.
[_Smiling._] Where was it burnt?
LADY FREDERICK.
In Ireland.
MERESTON.
I thought so.
LADY FREDERICK.
Just at present I can make a decent enough show by taking infinite pains; and my hand is not so heavy that the innocent eyes of your sex can discover how much of me is due to art. But in ten years you'll only be thirty-two, and then, if I married you, my whole life would be a mortal struggle to preserve some semblance of youth. Haven't you seen those old hags who've never surrendered to Anno Domini, with their poor, thin, wrinkled cheeks covered with paint, and the dreadful wigs that hide a hairless pate? Rather cock-eyed, don't you know, and invariably flaxen. You've laughed at their ridiculous graces, and you've been disgusted too. Oh, I'm so sorry for them, poor things. And I should become just like that, for I should never have the courage to let my hair be white so long as yours was brown. But if I don't marry you, I can look forward to the white hairs fairly happily. The first I shall pluck out, and the second I shall pluck out. But when the third comes I'll give in, and I'll throw my rouge and my poudre de riz and my pencils into the fire.
MERESTON.
But d'you think I should ever change?
LADY FREDERICK.
My dear boy, I'm sure of it. Can't you imagine what it would be to be tied to a woman who was always bound to sit with her back to the light?
And sometimes you might want to kiss me.
MERESTON.
I think it very probable.
LADY FREDERICK.
Well, you couldn't--in case you disarranged my complexion. [MERESTON _sighs deeply._] Don't sigh, Charlie. I daresay I was horrid to let you fall in love with me, but I'm only human, and I was desperately flattered.
MERESTON.
Was that all?
LADY FREDERICK.
And rather touched. That is why I want to give a cure with my refusal.
MERESTON.
But you break my heart.
LADY FREDERICK.
My dear, men have said that to me ever since I was fifteen, but I've never noticed that in consequence they ate their dinner less heartily.
MERESTON.
I suppose you think it was only calf-love?
LADY FREDERICK.
I'm not such a fool as to imagine a boy can love any less than a man. If I'd thought your affection ridiculous I shouldn't have been so flattered.
MERESTON.
It doesn't hurt any the less because the wounds you make are clean cut.
LADY FREDERICK.
But they'll soon heal. And you'll fall in love with a nice girl of your own age, whose cheeks flush with youth and not with rouge, and whose eyes sparkle because they love you, and not because they're carefully made up.
MERESTON.
But I wanted to help you. You're in such an awful scrape, and if you'll only marry me it can all be set right.
LADY FREDERICK.