She did not want a husband or a lover, but she could not live without being loved.  She was not sent into the world for that.  She began secretly to hate the two gentlemen that had lost her her relations’ affection, and she looked round to see how she could get rid of them without giving fresh offense to her dear aunt and uncle.  If she could only make it their own act!  Now a man in such a case inclines to give the obnoxious parties a chance of showing themselves generous and delicate; he would reveal the whole situation to them, and indicate the generous and manly course; but your thorough woman cannot do this.  It is physically as well as morally impossible to her.  Misogynists say it is too wise, and not cunning enough.  So what does Miss Lucy do but turn round and make love to Captain Kenealy?  And the cold virgin being at last by irrevocable fate driven to love-making, I will say this for her, she did not do it by halves.  She felt quite safe here.  The good-natured, hollow captain was fortified against passion by self-admiration.  She said to herself:  “Now here is a peg with a military suit hanging to it; if I can only fix my eyes on this piece of wood and regimentals, and make warm love to it, the love that poets have dreamed and romances described, I may surely hope to disgust my two admirers, and then they will abandon me and despise me.  Ah!  I could love them if they would only do that.”

Well, for a young lady that had never, to her knowledge, felt the tender passion, the imitation thereof which she now favored that little society with was a wonderful piece of representation.  Was Kenealy absent, behold Lucy uneasy and restless; was he present; but at a distance, her eye demurely devoured him; was he near her, she wooed him with such a god-like mixture of fire, of tenderness, of flattery, of tact; she did so serpentinely approach and coil round the soldier and his mental cavity, that all the males in creation should have been permitted to defile past (like the beasts going into the ark), and view this sweet picture a moment, and infer how women would be wooed, and then go and do it.  Effect: 

Talboys and Hardie mortified to the heart’s core; thought they had altogether mistaken her character.  “She is a love-sick fool.”

On Bazalgette:  “Ass!  Dodd was worth a hundred of him.”

On Kenealy:  made him twirl his mustache.

On Fountain:  filled him with dismay.  There remained only one to be hoodwinked.

SCENA.

A letter is brought in and handed to Captain Kenealy.  He reads it, and looks a little—­a very little—­vexed.  Nobody else notices it.

Lucy.  “What is the matter?  Oh, what has occurred?”

Kenealy.  “Nothing particulaa.”

Lucy.  “Don’t deceive us:  it is an order for you to join the horrid army.” (Clasps her hands.) “You are going to leave us.”

Kenealy.  “No, it is from my tailaa.  He waunts to be paed.” 
(Glares astonished.)