Enter from another direction, the
Countess and the Widow Bramble.)
Countess
Save your tears, Madame, save your tears. To tremble, to sigh, to sob.
All these demonstrations of sorrow are worse than sorrow itself.
Widow
Alas.
Countess
Don't avoid the offer I'm making you any more. Respond to me exactly.
You don't like to have your niece around. I'm going to take her off
your hands and marry her off in the country. Won't you give her some
wedding present?
Widow
This is the fourth day of my widowhood--the fourth day isn't it, Lucy?
Lucy
The fourth, yes.
Widow (to Countess)
Well, Madame, since then I haven't had any nourishment at all.
Lucy
We are nourished only by affliction and black tea.
Widow
Everything I eat rests on my stomach like lead.
Lucy
We eat hardly anything, and what we eat suffocates us.
Countess
Answer me, then Madame, agree.
Widow
No, I won't be alive in four days.
Countess
Live, and don't cry.
Widow
Ah, I will cry more than thirty years.
Lucy
To die soon and cry forever is our final resolution.
Widow
I don't know what I'm saying, Lucy.
Lucy
I see it plainly. We haven't the strength to marry Arabella.
Countess
While your husband was living, you gave the excuse that you hoped to
have children.
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