MRS. ERLYNNE: I am afraid not. Our lives lie too far apart. But there is a little thing I would like you to do for me. I want a photograph of you, Lady Windermere – would you give me one? You don’t know how gratified I should be.

LADY WINDERMERE: Oh, with pleasure. There is one on that table. I’ll show it to you. (Goes across to the table.)

LORD WINDERMERE (coming up to MRS. ERLYNNE and speaking in a low voice): It is monstrous your intruding yourself here after your conduct last night.

MRS. ERLYNNE (with an amused smile): My dear Windermere, manners before morals!

LADY WINDERMERE (returning): I’m afraid it is very flattering – I am not so pretty as that. (Showing photograph.)

MRS. ERLYNNE: You are much prettier. But haven’t you got one of yourself with your little boy?

LADY WINDERMERE: I have. Would you prefer one of those?

MRS. ERLYNNE: Yes.

LADY WINDERMERE: I’ll go and get it for you, if you’ll excuse me for a moment. I have one upstairs.

MRS. ERLYNNE: So sorry, Lady Windermere, to give you so much trouble.

LADY WINDERMERE (moves to door R.): No trouble at all, Mrs. Erlynne.

MRS. ERLYNNE: Thanks so much.

Exit LADY WINDERMERE R.

You seem rather out of temper this morning, Windermere. Why should you be? Margaret and I get on charmingly together.

LORD WINDERMERE: I can’t bear to see you with her. Besides, you have not told me the truth, Mrs. Erlynne.

MRS. ERLYNNE: I have not told her the truth, you mean.

LORD WINDERMERE (standing C): I sometimes wish you had. I should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know – that the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living – a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be – rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don’t understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her. You sully the innocence that is in her. (Moves L.C.) And then I used to think that with all your faults you were frank and honest. You are not.

MRS. ERLYNNE: Why do you say that?

LORD WINDERMERE: You made me get you an invitation to my wife’s ball.

MRS. ERLYNNE: For my daughter’s ball – yes.