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.

LYDIA
But you know I lose most of my fortune if I marry without my aunt's
consent, till of age; and that is what I have determined to do, ever
since I knew the penalty. Nor could I love the man who would wish to
wait a day for the alternative.

JULIA
Nay, this is caprice!

LYDIA
What, does Julia tax me with caprice?--I thought her lover Faulkland
had inured her to it.

JULIA
I do not love even his faults.

LYDIA
But apropos--you have sent to him, I suppose?

JULIA
Not yet, upon my word--nor has he the least idea of my being in Bath.
Sir Anthony's resolution was so sudden, I could not inform him of it.

LYDIA
Well, Julia, you are your own mistress, (though under the protection of
Sir Anthony), yet have you, for this long year, been a slave to the
caprice, the whim, the jealousy of this ungrateful Faulkland, who will
ever delay assuming the right of a husban