A Marriage Has Been Arranged

by Alfred Sutro

Genre: Drama
Setting:
Format of Original Source: Play
Recommended Adaptation Length:

Candidate for Adaptation? Not Reviewed

EXCERPT:

CROCKSTEAD. Your father–

ALINE. [Fiercely.] Not a word of my father!

CROCKSTEAD. Your father is a gentleman. The breed is rare, and very fine when you get it. But he is exceedingly poor. People marry for money nowadays; and your mother will be very unhappy if this marriage of ours falls through.

ALINE. [Moving a step towards him.] Is it to oblige my mother, then, that you desire to marry me?

CROCKSTEAD. Well, no. But you see I must marry some one, in mere self-defence; and honestly, I think you will do at least as well as any one else. [ALINE bursts out laughing.] That strikes you as funny?

ALINE. If you had the least grain of chivalrous feeling, you would realise that the man who could speak to a woman as you have spoken to me–

[She pauses.

CROCKSTEAD. Yes?

ALINE. I leave you to finish the sentence.

CROCKSTEAD. Thank you. I will finish it my own way. I will say that when a woman deliberately tries to wring an offer of marriage from a man whom she does not love, she deserves to be spoken to as I have spoken to you, Lady Aline.

ALINE. [Scornfully.] Love! What has love to do with marriage?

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