y that I shan't marry you if I am happy and
fortunate enough to gain your consent, then I just snap my fingers and
go my own way.

TANNER. Marry Violet!

RAMSDEN. Are you in your senses?

TANNER. Do you forget what we told you?

HECTOR. [recklessly] I don't care what you told me.

RAMSDEN. [scandalized] Tut tut, sir! Monstrous! [he flings away towards
the gate, his elbows quivering with indignation]

TANNER. Another madman! These men in love should be locked up. [He gives
Hector up as hopeless, and turns away towards the garden, but Malone,
taking offence in a new direction, follows him and compels him, by the
aggressivenes of his tone, to stop].

MALONE. I don't understand this. Is Hector not good enough for this
lady, pray?

TANNER. My dear sir, the lady is married already. Hector knows it; and
yet he persists in his infatuation. Take him home and lock him up.

MALONE. [bitterly] So this is the high-born social tone I've spoilt by
my ignorant, uncultivated behavior! Makin love to a married woman! [He
comes angrily between Hector and Violet, and almost bawls into Hector's
left ear] You've picked up that habit of the British aristocracy, have
you?

HECTOR. That's all right. Don't you trouble yourself about that. I'll
answer for the morality of what I'm doing.

TANNER. [coming forward to Hector's right hand with flashing eyes] Well
said, Malone! You also see that mere marriage laws are not morality! I
agree with you; but unfortunately Violet does not.

MALONE. I take leave to doubt that, sir. [Turning on Violet] Let me tell
you, Mrs Robinson, or whatever your right name is, you had no right to
send that letter to my son when you were the wife of another man.

HECTOR. [outraged] This is the last straw. Dad: you have insulted my
wife.

MALONE. YOUR wife!

TANNER. YOU the missing husband! Another moral impostor! [He smites his
brow, and collapses into Malone's chair].

MALONE. You've married without my consent!

RAMSDEN. You have deliberately humbugged us, sir!

HECTOR. Here: I have had just about enough of being badgered. Violet and
I are married: that's the long and the short of it. Now what have you
got to say--any of you?

MALONE. I know what I've got to say. She's married a beggar.

HECTOR. No; she's married a Worker [his American pronunciation imparts
an overwhelming intensity to this simple and unpopular word]. I start to
earn my own living this very afternoon.

MALONE. [sneering angrily]