me you for falling in love with me. I shall be
grateful to you all my life for it, because that was the first time
that anything really interesting happened to me.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Do you mean to tell me that nothing of that kind had
ever happened before? that no man had ever--

HYPATIA. Oh, lots. Thats part of the routine of life here: the very
dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar
an incident in my life as coffee for breakfast. Of course, hes too
much of a gentleman to misbehave himself; and I'm too much of a lady
to let him; and hes shy and sheepish; and I'm correct and
self-possessed; and at last, when I can bear it no longer, I either
frighten him off, or give him a chance of proposing, just to see how
he'll do it, and refuse him because he does it in the same silly way
as all the rest. You dont call that an event in one's life, do you?
With you it was different. I should as soon have expected the North
Pole to fall in love with me as you. You know I'm only a
linen-draper's daughter when all's said. I was afraid of you: you, a
great man! a lord! and older than my father. And then what a
situation it was! Just think of it! I was engaged to your son; and
you knew nothing about it. He was afraid to tell you: he brought you
down here because he thought if he could throw us together I could get
round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he
and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly;
and then Bentley took himself off, and left us--you and me!--to take a
walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You
never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was
the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to
make your boy happy. And then! and then! _[She rises to dance and
clap her hands in her glee]._

LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[shuddering]_ Stop, stop. Can no woman understand
a man's delicacy?

HYPATIA. _[revelling in the recollection]_ And then--ha, ha!--you
proposed. You! A father! For your son's girl!

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Stop, I tell you. Dont profane what you dont
understand.

HYPATIA. That was something happening at last with a vengeance. It
was splendid. It was my first peep behind the scenes. If I'd been
seventeen I should have fallen in love with you. Even as it is, I
feel quite differently towards you from what I do towards other old
men. So _[offering h