TRANTO.  Great Scott!

HILDEGARDE.  You’re startled?

TRANTO.  No!  After all, I might have foreseen that you’d come out on top.  The day before yesterday your modesty was making you say that your mother could eat you.  I, on the contrary, insisted that you could eat your mother.  Who was right?  I ask:  who was right?  When it really comes to the point—­well, you have a serious talk with your mother, and she gives in!

HILDEGARDE (gloomily).  No! I didn’t do it.  I tried, and failed.  Then Johnnie tried, and did it without the slightest trouble.  A schoolboy!  That’s why I’m so upset.

TRANTO (shaking his head).  You musn’t tell me that, Miss Hilda.  Of course it was you that did it.

HILDEGARDE (impatiently; standing up).  But I do tell you.

TRANTO.  Sorry!  Sorry!  Do be merciful!  My feelings about you at this very moment are so, if I may use the term, unbridled—­

HILDEGARDE (with false gentle calm).  And that’s not all.  I suppose you haven’t by any chance told father that I’m Sampson Straight?

TRANTO.  Certainly not.

HILDEGARDE.  You’re sure?

TRANTO.  Absolutely.

HILDEGARDE.  Well, I’m sorry.

TRANTO.  Why?

HILDEGARDE (quietly sarcastic).  Because papa told me you did tell him.  Therefore father is a liar.  I don’t like being the daughter of a liar.  I hate liars.

TRANTO.  Aren’t you rather cutting yourself off from mankind?

HILDEGARDE (going straight on).  For the last day or two father had been giving me such queer little digs every now and then that I began to suspect he knew who Sampson Straight was.  So I asked him right out this morning—­he was in bed—­and he had to acknowledge he did know and that you told him.

TRANTO.  Well, I didn’t exactly tell him.  He sort of guessed, and
I—­

HILDEGARDE (calmly, relentlessly).  You told him.

TRANTO.  No.  I merely admitted it.  You think I ought to have denied it?

HILDEGARDE.  Of course you ought to have denied it.

TRANTO.  But it was true.

HILDEGARDE.  And if it was?

TRANTO.  If it was true, how could I deny it?  You’ve just said you hate liars.

HILDEGARDE (losing self-control).  Please don’t be absurd.

TRANTO (a little nettled).  I apologise.

HILDEGARDE.  What for?

TRANTO.  For having put you in the wrong.  It’s such shocking bad diplomacy for any man to put any woman in the wrong.

HILDEGARDE (angrily).  Man—­woman!  Man—­woman!  There you are!  It’s always the same with you males.  Sex!  Sex!  Sex!

TRANTO (quite conquering his annoyance; persuasively).  But I’m fatally in love with you.  HILDEGARDE.  Well, of course there you have the advantage of me.

TRANTO.  Don’t you care a little—­