The Coquette

Major Sanford visits Eliza, interrupting her “ideas of sobriety and domestic solitude” (35). Sanford expresses his passionate feelings for Eliza, as well as his doubts concerning her relationship with Mr. Boyer. Though Eliza does not approve of these sentiments, her “ear was charmed with his rhetoric” (36). Sanford wishes, at least, that they could be friends. To this, Eliza says that she is already a “prisoner of friendship” to people who are “extremely refined in their notions of propriety” and that she has “no rights to receive visitants independent of them” (36). 

Sanford readily admits that he has faults that some would take exception to. However, he positions them as the innocent outcome of a life of means and an affluent upbringing. He implores Eliza to judge him by her own heart, rather than her friends’ prejudices against him.  

Mr. Richman enters the garden just as Major Sanford kisses Eliza’s hand. Sandford, in his characteristic way, explains away the potential impropriety of the scene, and he, Eliza, and the Richmans pass the afternoon together. After the major leaves, Mrs. Richman again warns Eliza that Sanford is attempting to seduce her.