AUGUS. Silence, Constantia! (_to FASTMAN_) Will you have the kindness
to explain, sir, what the devil you mean by going down upon your knees
to my wife?
FAST. (L.) What's that to you?
AUGUS. Sir!
FAST. What's that to you, I say? She is not your wife!
AUGUS. This lady is not my wife?
FAST. You know perfectly well she is not--you ought to be ashamed of
yourself.
MRS. BOBBINS. What consummate insolence!
FAST. And I think you are a confoundedly brassy old fellow to attempt
to take a high tone with me, after all that has come to light.
MRS. BOBBINS. Do you suffer him to talk to you like this, Bobbins,
without replying? Why don't you speak up, like a man?
AUGUS. Police! It's false! When I married her she was a widow!
FAST. Nonsense, sir, nonsense! Her husband, I tell you, is alive. It
was from him that I had the whole of these particulars--the lady
herself, I think, will scarcely venture to contradict me.
AUGUS. (_alarmed_) Speak, Constantia--why don't you speak?
MRS. BOBBINS. (_in a state of hysterical excitement_) I shall swoon
away! Give me a little air.
AUGUS. Do you suffer him to talk to you like this without replying?
Why don't you speak up, like a woman?
MRS. BOBBINS. Call Rebecca--I'm going into hysterics!
(_takes a chair._
AUGUS. She changes colour, and makes no denial! Guilty! guilty!
Unhappy bigamist! (_falls into chair, L._)
MRS. BOBBINS. Oh, oh, oh!
FAST. (_crossing to C., and going to C. D._) Rebecca! Rebecca!
AUGUS. Oh, Mr. Fastman, you see before you a blighted wretch, with his
household goods--gods shivered around him.
(_buries his face in his hands._
_Enter REBECCA, C. from L._