第21章 SCENE V.

MELLEFONT, CARELESS.

CARE. Mellefont, get out o' th' way, my Lady Plyant's coming, and I shall never succeed while thou art in sight. Though she begins to tack about; but I made love a great while to no purpose.

MEL. Why, what's the matter? She's convinced that I don't care for her.

CARE. I can't get an answer from her, that does not begin with her honour, or her virtue, her religion, or some such cant. Then she has told me the whole history of Sir Paul's nine years courtship; how he has lain for whole nights together upon the stairs before her chamber-door; and that the first favour he received from her was a piece of an old scarlet petticoat for a stomacher, which since the day of his marriage he has out of a piece of gallantry converted into a night-cap, and wears it still with much solemnity on his anniversary wedding-night.

MEL. That I have seen, with the ceremony thereunto belonging. For on that night he creeps in at the bed's feet like a gulled bassa that has married a relation of the Grand Signior, and that night he has his arms at liberty. Did not she tell you at what a distance she keeps him? He has confessed to me that, but at some certain times, that is, I suppose, when she apprehends being with child, he never has the privilege of using the familiarity of a husband with a wife. He was once given to scrambling with his hands, and sprawling in his sleep, and ever since she has him swaddled up in blankets, and his hands and feet swathed down, and so put to bed; and there he lies with a great beard, like a Russian bear upon a drift of snow.

You are very great with him, I wonder he never told you his grievances: he will, I warrant you.

CARE. Excessively foolish! But that which gives me most hopes of her is her telling me of the many temptations she has resisted.

MEL. Nay, then you have her; for a woman's bragging to a man that she has overcome temptations is an argument that they were weakly offered, and a challenge to him to engage her more irresistibly.

'Tis only an enhancing the price of the commodity, by telling you how many customers have underbid her.

CARE. Nay, I don't despair. But still she has a grudging to you.

I talked to her t'other night at my Lord Froth's masquerade, when I'm satisfied she knew me, and I had no reason to complain of my reception; but I find women are not the same bare-faced and in masks, and a vizor disguises their inclinations as much as their faces.

MEL. 'Tis a mistake, for women may most properly be said to be unmasked when they wear vizors; for that secures them from blushing and being out of countenance, and next to being in the dark, or alone, they are most truly themselves in a vizor mask. Here they come: I'll leave you. Ply her close, and by and by clap a BILLET DOUX into her hand; for a woman never thinks a man truly in love with her, till he has been fool enough to think of her out of her sight, and to lose so much time as to write to her.