Comtesse.  What are you up to now, Miss Pin?  You know as well as I do that there is no such speech.

[MAGGIE’s mouth tightens.]

Maggie.  I do not.

Comtesse.  It is a duel, is it, my friend?

[The Comtesse rings the bell and MAGGIE’s guilty mind is agitated.]

Maggie.  What are you ringing for?

Comtesse.  As the challenged one, Miss Pin, I have the choice of weapons.  I am going to send for your husband to ask him if he has written such a speech.  After which, I suppose, you will ask me to leave you while you and he write it together.

[Maggie wrings her hands.]

Maggie.  You are wrong, Comtesse; but please don’t do that.

Comtesse.  You but make me more curious, and my doctor says that I must be told everything. [The Comtesse assumes the pose of her sex in melodrama.] Put your cards on the table, Maggie Shand, or—­[She indicates that she always pinks her man.  Maggie dolefully produces a roll of paper from her bag.] What precisely is that?

[The reply is little more than a squeak.]

Maggie.  John’s speech.

Comtesse.  You have written it yourself!

[Maggie is naturally indignant.]

Maggie.  It’s typed.

Comtesse.  You guessed that the speech he wrote unaided would not satisfy, and you prepared this to take its place!

Maggie.  Not at all, Comtesse.  It is the draft of his speech that he left at home.  That’s all.

Comtesse.  With a few trivial alterations by yourself, I swear.  Can you deny it?

[No wonder that Maggie is outraged.  She replaces JOHN’s speech in the bag with becoming hauteur.]

Maggie.  Comtesse, these insinuations are unworthy of you.  May I ask where is my husband?

[The Comtesse drops her a curtsey.]

Comtesse.  I believe your Haughtiness may find him in the Dutch garden.  Oh, I see through you.  You are not to show him your speech.  But you are to get him to write another one, and somehow all your additions will be in it.  Think not, creature, that you can deceive one so old in iniquity as the Comtesse de la Briere.

[There can be but one reply from a good wife to such a charge, and at once the Comtesse is left alone with her shame.  Anon a footman appears.  You know how they come and go.]

Footman.  You rang, my lady?

Comtesse.  Did I?  Ah, yes, but why? [He is but lately from the ploughshare and cannot help her.  In this quandary her eyes alight upon the bag.  She is unfortunately too abandoned to feel her shame; she still thinks that she has the choice of weapons.  She takes the speech from the bag and bestows it on her servitor.] Take this to Mr. Venables, please, and say it is from Mr. Shand. [Thomas—­but in the end we shall probably call him John—­departs with the dangerous papers; and when Maggie returns she finds that the Comtesse is once more engaged in her interrupted game of Patience.] You did not find him?