MRS HUSHABYE. You little devil! [She goes out with Randall].

MANGAN. Won't you come, Miss Ellie?

ELLIE. I'm too tired. I'll take a book up to my room and rest a little.
[She goes to the bookshelf].

MANGAN. Right. You can't do better. But I'm disappointed. [He follows
Randall and Mrs Hushabye].

Ellie, Hector, and Lady Utterword are left. Hector is close to Lady
Utterword. They look at Ellie, waiting for her to go.

ELLIE [looking at the title of a book]. Do you like stories of
adventure, Lady Utterword?

LADY UTTERWORD [patronizingly]. Of course, dear.

ELLIE. Then I'll leave you to Mr Hushabye. [She goes out through the
hall].

HECTOR. That girl is mad about tales of adventure. The lies I have to
tell her!

LADY UTTERWORD [not interested in Ellie]. When you saw me what did you
mean by saying that you thought, and then stopping short? What did you
think?

HECTOR [folding his arms and looking down at her magnetically]. May I
tell you?

LADY UTTERWORD. Of course.

HECTOR. It will not sound very civil. I was on the point of saying, "I
thought you were a plain woman."

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, for shame, Hector! What right had you to notice
whether I am plain or not?

HECTOR. Listen to me, Ariadne. Until today I have seen only photographs
of you; and no photograph can give the strange fascination of the
daughters of that supernatural old man. There is some damnable quality
in them that destroys men's moral sense, and carries them beyond honor
and dishonor. You know that, don't you?

LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps I do, Hector. But let me warn you once for all
that I am a rigidly conventional woman. You may think because I'm a
Shotover that I'm a Bohemian, because we are all so horribly Bohemian.
But I'm not. I hate and loathe Bohemianism. No child brought up in a
strict Puritan household ever suffered from Puritanism as I suffered
from our Bohemianism.

HECTOR. Our children are like that. They spend their holidays in the
houses of their respectable schoolfellows.

LADY UTTERWORD. I shall invite them for Christmas.

HECTOR. Their absence leaves us both without our natural chaperones.

LADY UTTERWORD. Children are certainly very inconvenient sometimes. But
intelligent people can always manage, unless they are Bohemians.

HECTOR. You are no Bohemian; but you are no Puritan either: your
attraction is alive and powerful. What sort of woman do you count
yourself?

LADY UTTERWORD. I am a woman of the world,