HEADSTONE
You think of me no more  value than the dirt under your feet.

EUGENE
I assure you, schoolmaster; I don’t think about you.

HEADSTONE
That’s not true. You know better.

EUGENE
That’s coarse. But you don’t know better.

HEADSTONE
Mr. Wrayburn, at least I know very well that it would be idle to set myself against you in insolent words or overbearing manners. That lad who has just gone out could put you to shame in half-a-dozen branches of knowledge in half an hour, but you can throw him aside like an inferior. You can do as much by me, I have no doubt, beforehand.

EUGENE
Possibly.

HEADSTONE
But I am more than a lad. And I WILL be heard, sir.

EUGENE
As a schoolmaster, you are always being heard. That ought to content you.

HEADSTONE
But it does not content me. Do you suppose that a man, in forming himself for the duties I discharge and in watching and repressing himself daily to discharge them well, dismisses a man’s nature?

EUGENE
I suppose you, judging from what I see as I look at you, to be rather too passionate for a good schoolmaster.

HEADSTONE
Passionate with you, sir, I admit I am. Passionate with you, sir, I respect myself for being. But I have not Devils for my pupils.

EUGENE
For your teachers, I should rather say.

HEADSTONE
(Angry)
Mr. Wrayburn.

EUGENE
Schoolmaster.

HEADSTONE
Sir, my name is Bradley Headstone.

EUGENE
Your name doesn’t concern me. Now, what more?

HEADSTONE
This more. Oh, what a misfortune is mine. That I cannot so control myself as to appear a stronger creature than this, when a man who has not felt in all his life what I have felt in a day can so command himself! Mr. Wrayburn, I desire to say something to say something to you on my own part.

EUGENE
Say what you have to say. And let me remind you that the door is standing open, and your young friend waiting for you on the stairs.

HEADSTONE
When I accompanied that youth here, sir, I did so with the purpose of adding, as a man, whom you should not be permitted to put aside, in case you put him aside as a boy, that his instinct is correct and right.

EUGENE
Is that all?

HEADSTONE
No, sir. I strongly support him in his disapproval of your visits to his sister, and in his objection to your officiousness, and worse, in what you have taken upon yourself to do for her.

EUGENE
Is that all?

HEADSTONE
No, sir. I determined to tell you that you are not justified in these proceedings, and that they are injurious to his sister.

EUGENE
Are you her schoolmaster as well as her brother’s? Or perhaps you would like to be?

HEADSTONE
What do you mean by that?

EUGENE
A natural ambition enough. Far be it for me to say otherwise. The sister, who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps, is so very different from all the associations to which she has been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it is a very natural ambition.

HEADSTONE
Do you throw my obscurity in my teeth, Mr. Wrayburn?

EUGENE
That can hardly be, for I know nothing concerning it, schoolmaster, and seek to know nothing.

HEADSTONE
You reproach me with my origin. You cast insinuations at my bringing-up. But I tell you, sir, I have worked my way onward, out of both in spite of both, and have a right to be considered a better man than you, with better reasons for being proud.

EUGENE
How can I reproach you, with what is not within my knowledge, or how I can cast stones that were never in my hand, is a problem for the ingenuity of a schoolmaster to prove. Is that all?

HEADSTONE
No, sir. If you suppose that boy...

EUGENE
Who really will be tired of waiting...

HEADSTONE
...If You suppose that boy to be friendless, Mr. Wrayburn, you deceive yourself. I am his friend, and you shall find me so.

EUGENE
And you will find him on the stairs.

HEADSTONE
You have promised yourself, sir, that you could do what you chose here, because you had to deal with a mere boy, inexperienced, friendless, and unassisted. But I give you warning that this mean calculation is wrong. You have to do with a man also. You have to do with me. I will support him, and, if need be, require reparation for him. My hand and heart are in this cause, and are open to him.

EUGENE
And quite a coincidence, schoolmaster, the door is open.

HEADSTONE
I scorn your shifty evasions, and I scorn you. In the meanness of your nature you revile me with the meanness of my birth. I hold you in contempt for it. But if you don’t profit by this visit, and act accordingly, you will find me as bitterly in earnest against you as I could be if I deemed you worth a second thought on my own account.

Headstone leave and closes the door behind him. Eugene turns to Mortimer.

EUGENE
My dear fellow, I fear my unexpected visitors have been troublesome.

MORTIMER
Oh, Eugene, I think that I have been so blind!

EUGENE
How blind?

MORTIMER
What were your words that night at the river. What was it you asked me? Did I feel like a dark combination of traitor and pickpocket when I thought of that girl?

EUGENE
I seem to remember the expression.

MORTIMER
How do you feel when you think of her just now?

EUGENE
Don’t make no mistake, there is no better girl in London than Lizzie Hexam.

MORTIMER
Granted. What follows?

EUGENE
There, you put me upon guessing the riddle that I have given up.

MORTIMER
Eugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?

EUGENE
My dear fellow, no.

MORTIMER
Do you design to marry her?

EUGENE
My dear fellow, no.

MORTIMER
Do you design to pursue her?

EUGENE
My dear fellow, I don’t design anything. I have no design whatever. I am incapable of designs. If I  conceived a design, I should speedily abandon in exhausted by the operation.

MORTIMER
Oh, Eugene. Eugene!

EUGENE
My dear, Mortimer. What more can I tell you all I know, and acknowledge my ignorance of all I don’t know!

MORTIMER
Are you in communication with this girl, Eugene, and is what these people say true?

EUGENE
I concede both admissions to my honorable and learned friend.

MORTIMER
Then what is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?

EUGENE
I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Eugene lights up a cigar and begins to smoke it.