chunk: The play begins with the coquettish Charlotte and Letitia talking about the forthcoming marriage and Maria’s distress due to her father’s marriage plans for her. Billy Dimple's father was Van Rough's business partner. Before the death of Dimple’s father, a marriage between Van Rough’s Daughter, Maria, and Dimple was settled. While Dimple becomes snobbish in England, Maria betakes herself to books that "improve her taste": "The contrast was so striking betwixt the good sense of her books, and the flimsiness of her love-letters, that she discovered that she had unthinkingly engaged her hand without her heart."