ALGERNON: Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don’t think it right.

JACK: Oh, that is nonsense!

ALGERNON: It isn’t. It is a great truth. It accounts for the extraordinary number of bachelors that one sees all over the place. In the second place, I don’t give my consent.

JACK: Your consent! What utter nonsense you talk!

ALGERNON: My dear fellow, Gwendolen is my first cousin. And before I allow you to marry her, you will have to clear up the whole question of Cecily.

JACK: Cecily! What on earth do you mean? (ALGERNON goes to the bell and rings it. Then returns to tea-table and eats another sandwich.) What do you mean, Algy, by Cecily! I don’t know any one of the name of Cecily…as far as I remember.

Enter LANE.

ALGERNON: Bring me that cigarette case Mr. Worthing left in the smoking-room the last time he dined here.

LANE: Yes, sir.

LANE goes out.

JACK: Do you mean to say you have had my cigarette case all this time? I wish to goodness you had let me know. I have been writing frantic letters to Scotland Yard about it. I was very nearly offering a large reward.

ALGERNON: Well, I wish you would offer one. I happen to be more than usually hard up.

JACK: There is no good offering a large reward now that the thing is found.

Enter LANE with the cigarette case on a salver. ALGERNON takes it at once. LANE goes out.

ALGERNON: I think that is rather mean of you, Ernest, I must say. (Opens case and examines it.) However, it makes no matter, for, now that I look at the inscription inside, I find that the thing isn’t yours after all.

JACK: Of course it’s mine. (Moving to him.) You have seen me with it a hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read what is written inside. It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case.

ALGERNON: Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. One should read everything. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.

JACK: I am quite aware of the fact, and I don’t propose to discuss modern culture. It isn’t the sort of thing one should talk of in private. I simply want my cigarette case back.

ALGERNON: Yes; but this isn’t your cigarette case. This cigarette case is a present from some one of the name of Cecily, and you said you didn’t know any one of that name.

JACK: Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt.

ALGERNON: Your aunt!

JACK: Yes. Charming old lady she is, too. Lives at Tunbridge Wells. Just give it back to me, Algy.