Racine: Phaedra

4o6
GOLDSMITH
Miss Hardcastle, Well then, I'll follow.
Marlow [aside]. This pretty smooth dialogue has done for
me.
[Exit.
Miss Hardcastle. Ha ! ha ! ha ! Was
there ever such a sober
sentimental interview? I'm certain he scarce looked in
my face the whole time. Yet the fellow, but for his unaccountable
bashfulness, is pretty well, too. He has good
sense, but then so buried in his fears, that it fatigues one
more than ignorance. If I could teach him a little confi-
dence, it would be doing somebody that I know of a piece
of service. But who is that somebody?—that, faith, is a
question I can scarce answer. [Exit.
Enter Tony and Miss Neville, followed by Mrs. Hardcastle and
Hastings.
Tony. What do you follow me for, cousin Con? I wonder
you're not ashamed to be so very engaging.
Miss Neville. I hope, cousin, one may speak to one's own
relations, and not be to blame.
Tony. Ay, but I know what sort of a relation you want to
make me, though ; but it won't do. I tell you, cousin Con,
it won't do, so I beg you'll keep your distance, I want no
nearer relationship.
[She follows him, coquetting, to the back scene.
Mrs. Hardcastle. Well ! I vow, Mr. Hastings, you are very
entertaining. There's nothing in the world I love to talk
of so much as London, and the fashions, though I was never
From
there myself.
Hastings. Never there ! You amaze me !
your air and
manner, I concluded you had been bred all your life either
at Ranelagh, St. James's, or Tower Wharf.
sir, you're only pleased to say so. We
country persons can have no manner at all. I'm in love
Mrs. Hardcastle. O !
with the town, and that serves to raise me above some of
our neighboring rustics ; but who can have a manner, that
has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens, the
Borough, and such places where the nobility chiefly resort ?
All I can do is to enjoy London at second-hand. I take
care to know every tete-d-tete from the " Scandalous
Magazine," and have all the fashions as they, come out.