traditions, I buy it for
him, and give him the means of keeping it up.

VIOLET. What do you mean by a wife worthy of its traditions? Cannot any
well bred woman keep such a house for him?

MALONE. No: she must be born to it.

VIOLET. Hector was not born to it, was he?

MALONE. His granmother was a barefooted Irish girl that nursed me by a
turf fire. Let him marry another such, and I will not stint her marriage
portion. Let him raise himself socially with my money or raise somebody
else so long as there is a social profit somewhere, I'll regard my
expenditure as justified. But there must be a profit for someone. A
marriage with you would leave things just where they are.

VIOLET. Many of my relations would object very much to my marrying the
grandson of a common woman, Mr Malone. That may be prejudice; but so is
your desire to have him marry a title prejudice.

MALONE. [rising, and approaching her with a scrutiny in which there is
a good deal of reluctant respect] You seem a pretty straightforward
downright sort of a young woman.

VIOLET. I do not see why I should be made miserably poor because I
cannot make profits for you. Why do you want to make Hector unhappy?

MALONE. He will get over it all right enough. Men thrive better on
disappointments in love than on disappointments in money. I daresay you
think that sordid; but I know what I'm talking about. My father died of
starvation in Ireland in the black 47, Maybe you've heard of it.

VIOLET. The Famine?

MALONE. [with smouldering passion] No, the starvation. When a country
is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. My father
was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in my mother's
arms. English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland. Well, you can keep
Ireland. I and my like are coming back to buy England; and we'll buy the
best of it. I want no middle class properties and no middle class women
for Hector. That's straightforward isn't it, like yourself?

VIOLET. [icily pitying his sentimentality] Really, Mr Malone, I am
astonished to hear a man of your age and good sense talking in that
romantic way. Do you suppose English noblemen will sell their places to
you for the asking?

MALONE. I have the refusal of two of the oldest family mansions in
England. One historic owner can't afford to keep all the rooms dusted:
the other can't afford the death duties. What do you say now?

VIOLET. Of course it is very scandalous; but surely you