you surely need not have married our GINA to my old friend HIALMAR.
You know very well she was no better than she should have been!

_Old Werle_. True--but then no more is Mrs. SÖRBY. And _I_ am going to
marry _her_--if you have no objection, that is.

_Gregers_. None in the world! How can I object to a stepmother who
is playing Blind Man's Buff at the present moment with the Norwegian
nobility? I am not so overstrained as all that. But really I can_not_
allow my old friend HIALMAR, with his great, confiding, childlike
mind, to remain in contented ignorance of GINA's past. No, I see my
mission in life at last! I shall take my hat, and inform him that his
home is built upon a lie. He will be _so_ much obliged to me! [_Takes
his hat, and goes out._

_Old Werle_. Ha!--I am a wealthy merchant, of dubious morals, and I
am about to marry my housekeeper, who is on intimate terms with the
Norwegian aristocracy. I have a son who loathes me, and who is either
an Ibsenian satire on the Master's own ideals, or else an utterly
impossible prig--I don't know or care which. Altogether, I flatter
myself my household affords an accurate and realistic picture of
Scandinavian Society!

ACT II.

_HIALMAR EKDAL's Photographic Studio. Cameras, neck-rests,
and other instruments of torture lying about. GINA EKDAL and
HEDWIG, her daughter, aged 14, and wearing spectacles,
discovered sitting up for HIALMAR._