Oscar Wilde: Lady Windermere's Fan

3. THIRD ACT (continued)

CECIL GRAHAM. Well, you'll have lots of topics of conversation with HER, Tuppy. [Rising and going to him.]

LORD AUGUSTUS. You're getting annoying, dear-boy; you're getting demmed annoying.

CECIL GRAHAM. [Puts his hands on his shoulders.] Now, Tuppy, you've lost your figure and you've lost your character. Don't lose your temper; you have only got one.

LORD AUGUSTUS. My dear boy, if I wasn't the most good-natured man in London -

CECIL GRAHAM. We'd treat you with more respect, wouldn't we, Tuppy? [Strolls away.]

DUMBY. The youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair. [LORD AUGUSTUS looks round angrily.]

CECIL GRAHAM. Mrs. Erlynne has a very great respect for dear Tuppy.

DUMBY. Then Mrs. Erlynne sets an admirable example to the rest of her sex. It is perfectly brutal the way most women nowadays behave to men who are not their husbands.

LORD WINDERMERE. Dumby, you are ridiculous, and Cecil, you let your tongue run away with you. You must leave Mrs. Erlynne alone. You don't really know anything about her, and you're always talking scandal against her.

CECIL GRAHAM. [Coming towards him L.C.] My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. _I_ only talk gossip.

LORD WINDERMERE. What is the difference between scandal and gossip?

CECIL GRAHAM. Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. And most women know it, I'm glad to say.

LORD AUGUSTUS. Just my sentiments, dear boy, just my sentiments.