BENNET. It has always been the custom of the Lady Bantocks, when in residence, to be at home on Wednesdays. VERNON. Perhaps better not. It may cause talk; if, by chance, anybody does come. I was forgetting it was Wednesday. [_Fanny sits again_.] I shan’t do anything without consulting you. Good-bye. FANNY. Good-bye. _Vernon goes out_. BENNET. You think it wise, discussing with his lordship the secret history of the Bennet family? FANNY. What do you mean by telling him my father was an organ-grinder? If the British public knew the difference between music and a hurdy-gurdy, he would have kept a butler of his own. BENNET. I am not aware of having mentioned to his lordship that you ever to my knowledge even had a father. It is not my plan—for the present at all events—to inform his lordship anything about your family. Take care I am not forced to. FANNY. Because my father, a composer who had his work performed at the Lamoureux Concerts—as I can prove, because I’ve got the programme—had the misfortune to marry into a family of lackeys—I’m not talking about my mother: she was never really one of you. _She_ had the soul of an artist. BENNET [_white with suppressed fury_; _he is in front of her_; _his very look is enough to silence her_]. Now you listen to me, my girl, once and for all. I told you the night of your arrival that whether this business was going to prove a pleasant or an unpleasant one depended upon you. You make it an easy one—for your own sake. With one word I can bring your house of cards about your ears. I’ve only to tell him the truth for him to know you as a cheat and liar. [_She goes to speak_; _again he silences her_.] You listen to me. You’ve seen fit to use strong language; now I’m using strong language. This _boy_, who has married you in a moment of impulse, what does _he_ know about the sort of wife a man in his position needs? What do _you_? made to sing for your living on the Paris boulevards—whose only acquaintance with the upper classes has been at shady restaurants. FANNY. He didn’t _want_ a woman of his own class. He told me so. It was because I wasn’t a colourless, conventional puppet with a book of etiquette in place of a soul that he was first drawn towards me. BENNET. Yes. At twenty-two, boys like unconventionality. Men don’t: they’ve learnt its true name, vulgarity. Do you think I’ve stood behind English society for forty years without learning anything about it! What you call a colourless puppet is what _we_ call an English lady. And that you’ve got to learn to be. You talk of “lackeys.” If your mother, my poor sister Rose, came from a family of “lackeys” there would be no hope for you. With her blood in your veins the thing can be done. We Bennets—[_he draws himself up_]—we serve. We are not lackeys. FANNY. All right. Don’t you call my father an organ-grinder, and I won’t call you lackeys. Unfortunately that doesn’t end the trouble.