I did rightly in coming to you, sir.
HOMEWARE: 'Her uncle Homeware'?
ARDEN: You read through us all, sir.
HOMEWARE: It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the
gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady's uncle Homeware.
ARDEN: The third.
HOMEWARE: Yes, she is pursued. It could hardly be otherwise. Her
attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent. Yet, Mr.
Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to
be profane by the laws of this region. Can you again forget that Astraea
is a widow?
ARDEN: She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.
HOMEWARE: The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not to
measure her widowhood by years. His, from the altar to the tomb. As it
might be read, a one day's walk!
ARDEN: Is she, in the pride of her youth, to be sacrificed to a whimsical
feminine delicacy?
HOMEWARE: You have argued it with her?
ARDEN: I have presumed.
HOMEWARE: And still she refused her hand!
ARDEN: She commended me to you, sir.
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