SELINA: Do please tell us a little more. Are the women you take seriously serious women? LORD WILLIAM: Selina, you are my daughter, and in every sense of the word, my creation. I have told you before now that your cousin Ann is the only serious woman in the world. I am for the moment using the term woman as a form of praise. There are, of course, many serious persons of the female sex. TIM: I don’t call Ann serious. She bubbles over with gaiety. MRS. MARTINEAU: But she takes things seriously. SELINA: She is good. MOLYNEUX: She is unique. A woman we all adore, who can be described as good. SELINA: Do you adore Ann, Mr. Jordan? JORDAN: Yes. LORD WILLIAM: Well, I wish she weren’t up to so many good works. As for her virtue it is a “Trespassers will be prosecuted” signal that you can see for miles. SELINA: Papa, I think you’re very vulgar. TIM: Ann is so radiantly uncensoriously good. MOLYNEUX: Ann is a damned good-looking woman. LORD WILLIAM: But she does lead a silly life. I did think that once the war was over and she had stopped nursing cholera in Siberia we should be all right. But what has peace brought us? Why, the house is positively infested with Mayors and clergymen and cranks and old maids, and when she’s tired of talking to her Socialist friends, she thinks of Ninian, _plasters_ on the family jewels, resumes the rôle of the Lord Lieutenant’s wife and entertains the county. Disgusting, I call it. MOLYNEUX: William and I have never believed in entertaining the county. LORD WILLIAM: I confess I am sometimes entertained by it. MOLYNEUX: My appetite is too jaded to enjoy the hunting exploits of the squire or the cameos of his lady. LORD WILLIAM: And the parson is always collecting for an organ. MRS. MARTINEAU: Ann is so strange; she really seems to enjoy it. TIMOTHY: That is because everything is dramatic to her. She doesn’t know what patronage means, so everyone tells her their secrets. MRS. MARTINEAU: They can’t be very interesting secrets. TIMOTHY: All secrets are interesting. MOLYNEUX: All secrets are the same. LORD WILLIAM: The tiresome thing about a secret is that no one believes you know one till you’ve told it. MRS. MARTINEAU: Ann is so patient. She can listen for hours to the laundry-maid. TIMOTHY: Ann is so interested. She knows that all of the romance in the world is contained in the laundry-maid’s love affair. MOLYNEUX: All lovers are the same. That is why I gave up being one. I realized that the only new rôle I could assume was that of a husband, and marriage seemed too heavy a price to pay. MRS. MARTINEAU: And everyone knows all about husbands. MOLYNEUX: To tell you the truth, I wanted to keep one illusion. I was afraid that if I married I might discover that wives deceive their lovers with their husbands. LORD WILLIAM: Molly and I gave up sentimental adventures when we noticed that we were becoming sentimental. We decided to take to dry wit.