Lord Illingworth has just offered to make me his secretary. Lady Hunstanton, I have such good news to tell you.

And I hope our charming American visitor will carry back pleasant recollections of our English country life. Dear Caroline, how kind of you! I think we all do fit in very nicely together. Jane, I was just saying what a pleasant party you have asked us to meet. , followed by Footman with shawls and a cushion.] Do you, in England, allow no friendship to exist between a young man and a young girl? English women conceal their feelings till after they are married. It is not customary in England, Miss Worsley, for a young lady to speak with such enthusiasm of any person of the opposite sex. He has one of the most beautiful natures I have ever come across.

Arbuthnot has a beautiful nature! He is so simple, so sincere. In America those are the people we respect most. In my young days, Miss Worsley, one never met any one in society who worked for their living. I am not sure, however, that Jane is right in taking him out of his position. Lady Hunstanton is most kind in asking him here, and Lord Illingworth seems to have taken quite a fancy to him. Ah, yes! the young man who has a post in a bank. I myself don’t believe she ran away more than once. But you know how unfair people often are. It is said, of course, that she ran away twice before she was married. I am not sure, Miss Worsley, that foreigners like yourself should cultivate likes or dislikes about the people they are invited to meet. Allonby is hardly a very suitable person. One has never heard his name before in the whole course of one’s life, which speaks volumes for a man, nowadays. Lord Illingworth, of course, is a man of high distinction. Well, you couldn’t come to a more charming place than this, Miss Worsley, though the house is excessively damp, quite unpardonably damp, and dear Lady Hunstanton is sometimes a little lax about the people she asks down here. What is the use of my always knitting mufflers for you if you won’t wear them? Ah! you must find it very draughty, I should fancy. They used to tell us at school that some of our states are as big as France and England put together. We have the largest country in the world, Lady Caroline. Have you any country? What we should call country? You have no country houses, I am told, in America? I believe this is the first English country house you have stayed at, Miss Worsley? Lawn in front of the terrace at Hunstanton.

The action of the play takes place within twenty-four hours.

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde