Isab. I wish I were as confident of one as t'other. I saw the respectful downcast of his eye, when you catch'd him gazing at you during the music. He, I warrant, was surprised, as if he had been taken stealing your watch. Oh! the undissembled guilty look!

Ind. But did you observe any such thing, really? I thought he looked most charmingly graceful! How engaging is modesty in a man, when one knows there is a great mind within. So tender a confusion! and yet, in other respects, so much himself, so collected, so dauntless, so determined!

Isab. Ah! niece! there is a sort of bashfulness which is the best engine to carry on a shameless purpose. Some men's modesty serves their wickedness, as hypocrisy gains the respect due to piety. But I will own to you, there is one hopeful symptom, if there could be such a thing as a disinterested lover. But it's all a perplexity-till-till-till

Ind.

Till what?

Isab. Till I know whether Mr. Myrtle and Mr. Bevil are really friends or foes. -And that I will be convinced of before I sleep; for you shall not be deceived.

Ind. I'm sure I never shall, if your fears can guard me. In the meantime I'll wrap myself up in the integrity of my own heart, nor dare to doubt of his.

As conscious honor all his actions steers, So conscious innocence dispels my fears. (Exeunt.)

ACT III.

SCENE 1. Sealand's House.

(Enter Tom, meeting Phillis.)

Tom. Well, Phillis! What, with a face as if you had never seen me before!What a work have I to do now? She has seen some new visitant at their house whose airs she has catcht, and is resolved to practise them upon me. Numberless are the changes she'll dance through before she'll answer this plain question: videlicet, have you delivered my master's letter to your lady? Nay, I know her too well to ask an account of it in an ordinary way; I'll be in my airs as well as she. (Aside.)-Well, madam, as unhappy as you are at present pleased

to make me, I would not, in the general, be any other than what I am. I would

not be a bit wiser, a bit richer, a bit taller, a bit shorter than I am at this instant.

(Looking steadfastly at her.) Phil. Did ever anybody doubt, Master Thomas, but that you were extremely satisfied with your sweet self?

Tom. I am, indeed. The thing I have least reason to be satisfied with is my fortune, and I am glad of my poverty. Perhaps if I were rich I should overlook the finest woman in the world, that wants nothing but riches to be thought so. Phil. How prettily was that said! But I'll have a great deal more before I'll say one word.

(Aside.)

Tom. I should, perhaps, have been stupidly above her had I not been her equal; and by not being her equal, never had opportunity of being her slave. I am my master's servant for hire-I am my mistress's from choice, would she but approve my passion.

Phil. I think it's the first time I ever

heard you speak of it with any sense of the anguish, if you really do suffer any. Tom. Ah, Phillis! can you doubt, after what you have seen?

Phil. I know not what I have seen, nor what I have heard; but since I'm at leisure, you may tell me when you fell in love with me; how you fell in love with me; and what you have suffered or are ready to suffer for me. Tom. Oh, the unmerciful jade! when I'm in haste about my master's letter. But I must go through it. (Aside.)-Ah! too well I remember when, and how, and on what occasion I was first surprised. It was on the 1st of April, 1715, I came into Mr. Sealand's service; I was then a hobble-dehoy, and you a pretty little tight girl, a favorite handmaid of the housekeeper. At that time we neither of us knew what was in us. I remember I was ordered to get out of the window, one pair of stairs, to rub the sashes clean; the person employed on the inner side was your charming self, whom I had never seen before.

Phil. I think I remember the silly accident. What made ye, you oaf, ready to fall down into the street?

Tom. You know not, I warrant you-you could not guess what surprised me. You took no delight when you immediately

grew wanton in your conquest, and put your lips close, and breathed upon the glass, and when my lips approached, a dirty cloth you rubbed against my face, and hid your beauteous form! When I again drew near, you spit, and rubbed, and smiled at my undoing.

Phil. What silly thoughts you men have! Tom. We were Pyramus and Thisbe-but ten times harder was my fate. Pyramus could peep only through a wall; I saw her, saw my Thisbe in all her beauty, but as much kept from her as if a hundred walls between-for there was more: there was her will against me. Would she but yet relent! O Phillis! Phillis! shorten my torment, and declare you pity me. Phil. I believe it's very sufferable; the pain is not so exquisite but that you may bear it a little longer. Tom. Oh! my charming Phillis, if all depended on my fair one's will, I could with glory suffer-but, dearest creature, consider our miserable state. Phil. How! Miserable! Tom. We are miserable to be in love, and under the command of others than those we love; with that generous passion in the heart, to be sent to and fro on errands, called, checked, and rated for the meanest trifles. Oh, Phillis! you don't know how many china cups and glasses my passion for you has made me break. You have broke my fortune as well as my heart.

Phil.

Well, Mr. Thomas, I cannot but own to you that I believe your master writes and you speak the best of any men in the world. Never was woman so well pleased with a letter as my young lady was with his; and this is an answer to it.

(Gives him a letter.) Tom. This was well done, my dearest; consider, we must strike out some pretty livelihood for ourselves by closing their affairs. It will be nothing for them to give us a little being of our own, some small tenement, out of their large possessions. Whatever they give us, it will be more than what they keep for themselves. One acre with Phillis would be worth a whole county without her. Phil. O, could I but believe you! Tom. If not the utterance, believe the touch of my lips.

Phil.

(Kisses her.)

There's no contradicting you. How closely you argue, Tom!

I must hasten with this letter, to hasten towards the possession of you. Then, Phillis, consider how I must be revenged, look to it, of all your skittishness, shy looks, and at best but coy compliances. Phil. Oh, Tom, you grow wanton, and sensual, as my lady calls it; I must not endure it. Oh! foh! you are a man-an odious, filthy, male creature-you should behave, if you had a right sense or were a man of sense, like Mr. Cimberton, with distance and indifference; or, let me see, some other becoming hard word, with seeming in-in-in-advertency, and not rush on one as if you were seizing a prey.But hush! the ladies are coming.-Good Tom, don't kiss me above once, and be gone. Lard, we have been fooling and toying, and not considered the main business of our masters and mistresses. Tom. Why, their business is to be fooling and toying as soon as the parchments are ready.

Phil. Well remembered, parchments; my lady, to my knowledge, is preparing writings between her coxcomb cousin, Cimberton, and my mistress, though my master has an eye to the parchments already prepared between your master, Mr. Bevil, and my mistress; and, I believe, my mistress herself has signed and sealed, in her heart, to Mr. Myrtle.-Did I not bid you kiss me but once, and be gone? But I know you won't be satisfied. Tom. No, you smooth creature, how

should I?

(Kissing her hand.) Phil. Well, since you are so humble, or so cool, as to ravish my hand only, I'll take my leave of you like a great lady, and you a man of quality.

(They salute formally.)

Tom. Pox of all this state.

ness.

Luc. Why did you turn him away then? Phil. For your ladyship's service-to

carry your ladyship's letter to his master. I could hardly get the rogue away. Luc. Why, has he so little love for his master?

Phil. No; but he hath so much love for his mistress.

Luc. But I thought I heard him kiss you.

Why did you suffer that?

Phil. Why, madam, we vulgar take it to be a sign of love-We servants, we poor people, that have nothing but our persons to bestow or treat for, are forced to deal and bargain by way of sample, and therefore as we have no parchments or wax necessary in our agreements, we squeeze with our hands and seal with our lips, to ratify vows and promises. Luc. But can't you trust one another without such earnest down?

Phil. We don't think it safe, any more than you gentry, to come together without deeds executed.

Luc. Thou art a pert merry hussy. Phil. I wish, madam, your lover and you were as happy as Tom and your servant

Phil. You have different beds in the same house.

Luc. Pshaw! I have a very great value

for Mr. Bevil, but have absolutely put an end to his pretensions in the letter I gave you for him. But my father, in his heart, still has a mind to him, were it not for this woman they talk of; and I am apt to imagine he is married to her, or never designs to marry at all. Phil. Then Mr. MyrtleLuc. He had my parents' leave to apply to me, and by that he has won me and my affections; who is to have this body of mine without 'em, it seems, is nothing to me. My mother says 't is indecent for me to let my thoughts stray about the person of my husband; nay, she says a maid, rigidly virtuous, though she may have been where her lover was a thou

sand times, should not have made observations enough to know him from another man when she sees him in a third place.

Phil. That is more than the severity of a nun, for not to see when one may is hardly possible; not to see when one can't is very easy. At this rate, madam, there are a great many whom you have not seen who

Luc. Mamma says the first time you see your husband should be at that instant he is made so. When your father, with the help of the minister, gives you to him, then you are to see him; then you are to observe and take notice of him; because then you are to obey him. Phil. But does not my lady remember you are to love as well as obey?

Luc. To love is a passion, 't is a desire, and we must have no desires.-Oh, I cannot endure the reflection! With what insensibility on my part, with what more than patience have I been exposed and offered to some awkward booby or other in every county of Great Britain! Phil. Indeed, madam, I wonder I never heard you speak of it before with this indignation.

As

Luc. Every corner of the land has presented me with a wealthy coxcomb. fast as one treaty has gone off, another has come on, till my name and person have been the tittle-tattle of the whole town. What is this world come to?-no shame left-to be bartered for like the beasts of the field, and that in such an instance as coming together to an entire familiarity and union of soul and body. Oh! and this without being so much as well-wishers to each other, but for increase of fortune.

Phil. But, madam, all these vexations will end very soon in one for all. Mr. Cimberton is your mother's kinsman, and three hundred years an older gentleman than any lover you ever had; for which reason, with that of his prodigious large estate, she is resolved on him, and has sent to consult the lawyers accordingly; nay, has (whether you know it or no) been in treaty with Sir Geoffry, who, to join in the settlement, has accepted of a sum to do it, and is every moment expected in town for that purpose. Luc. How do you get all this intelligence?

Phil. By an art I have, I thank my stars, beyond all the waiting-maids in Great

Britain-the art of listening, madam, for your ladyship's service. Luc. I shall soon know as much as you do; leave me, leave me, Phillis, begone. Here, here! I'll turn you out. My mother says I must not converse with my servants, though I must converse with no one else. (Exit Phil.)-How unhappy are we who are born to great fortunes! No one looks at us with indifference, or acts towards us on the foot of plain dealing; yet, by all I have been heretofore offered to or treated for I have been used with the most agreeable of all abuses -flattery. But now, by this phlegmatic fool I'm used as nothing, or a mere thing. He, forsooth, is too wise, too learned to have any regard to desires, and I know not what the learned oaf calls sentiments of love and passionHere he comes with my mother-It's much if he looks at me, or if he does, takes no more notice of me than of any other movable in the room.

(Enter Mrs. Sealand, and Mr. Cimberton.) Mrs. Seal. How do I admire this noble, this learned taste of yours, and the worthy regard you have to our own ancient and honorable house in consulting a means to keep the blood as pure and as regularly descended as may be. Cim. Why, really, madam, the young women of this age are treated with discourses of such a tendency, and their imaginations so bewildered in flesh and blood, that a man of reason can't talk to be understood. They have no ideas of happiness, but what are more gross than the gratification of hunger and thirst. Luc. With how much reflection he is a coxcomb!

(Aside.)

Cim. And in truth, madam, I have considered it as a most brutal custom that persons of the first character in the world should go as ordinarily, and with as little shame, to bed as to dinner with one another. They proceed to the propagation of the species as openly as to the preservation of the individual. Luc. She that willingly goes to bed to thee must have no shame, I'm sure. (Aside.)

Mrs. Seal. Oh, cousin Cimberton! cousin Cimberton! how abstracted, how refined is your sense of things! But, indeed, it is too true there is nothing so ordinary as to say, in the best governed families,

my master and lady are gone to bed; one does not know but it might have been said of one's self.

(Hiding her face with her fan.) Cim. Lycurgus, madam, instituted otherwise; among the Lacedæmonians the whole female world was pregnant, but none but the mothers themselves knew by whom; their meetings were secret, and the amorous congress always by stealth; and no such professed doings between the sexes as are tolerated among us under the audacious word, marriage.

Mrs. Seal. Oh, had I lived in those days and been a matron of Sparta, one might with less indecency have had ten children, according to that modest institution, than one, under the confusion of our modern, barefaced manner.

Luc. And yet, poor woman, she has gone through the whole ceremony, and here I stand a melancholy proof of it.

(Aside.)

Cimb. If you please, madam-to set her a little that way.

Mrs. Seal. Lucinda, say nothing to him, you are not a match for him; when you are married, you may speak to such a husband when you're spoken to. But I am disposing of you above yourself every

way. Cimb. Madam, you cannot but observe the inconveniences I expose myself to, in hopes that your ladyship will be the consort of my better part. As for the young woman, she is rather an impediment than a help to a man of letters and speculation. Madam, there is no reflection, no philosophy, can at all times subdue the sensitive life, but the animal shall sometimes carry away the man. Ha! ay, the vermilion of her lips.

Luc. Pray, don't talk of me thus.
Cimb. The pretty enough-pant of her
bosom.

Luc. Sir! madam, don't you hear him?
Cimb. Her forward chest.
Luc. Intolerable!

Cimb. I say, madam, her impatience, while we are looking at her, throws out all attractions-her arms-her neck-what a spring in her step!

Luc. Don't you run me over thus, you strange unaccountable!

Cimb. What an elasticity in her veins and arteries!

Luc. I have no veins, no arteries.

Mrs. Seal. Oh, child! hear him, he talks finely; he's a scholar, he knows what you have.

Cimb. The speaking invitation of her shape, the gathering of herself up, and the indignation you see in the pretty little thing-Now, I am considering her, on this occasion, but as one that is to be pregnant.

Luc. The familiar, learned, unseasonable puppy!

(Aside.)

Cimb. And pregnant undoubtedly she will be yearly. I fear I shan't, for many years, have discretion enough to give her one fallow season.

Luc. Monster! there's no bearing it. The hideous sot! there's no enduring it, to be thus surveyed like a steed at sale. Cimb. At sale! She's very illiterateBut she's very well limbed too; turn her in; I see what she is.

(Exit Lucinda, in a rage.) Mrs. Seal. Go, you creature, I am ashamed of you.

Cimb. No harm done-you know, madam, the better sort of people, as I observed to you, treat by their lawyers of weddings (Adjusting himself at the glass.)—and the woman in the bargain, like the mansion house in the sale of the estate, is thrown in, and what that is, whether good or bad, is not at all considered. Mrs. Seal. I grant it; and therefore make no demand for her youth and beauty, and every other accomplishment, as the common world think 'em, because she is not polite.

Cimb. Madam, I know your exalted understanding, abstracted, as it is, from vulgar prejudices, will not be offended, when I declare to you, I marry to have an heir to my estate, and not to beget a colony, or a plantation. This young woman's beauty and constitution will demand provision for a tenth child at least. Mrs. Seal. With all that wit and learning, how considerate! What an econo

mist!

(Aside.)-Sir, I cannot make her any other than she is; or say she is much better than the other young women of this age, or fit for much besides being a mother; but I have given directions for the marriage settlements, and Sir Geoffry Cimberton's counsel is to meet ours here, at this hour, concerning his joining in the deed, which, when executed, makes you capable of settling what is due to Lucinda's fortune. Herself, as I told you, I say nothing of.

Cimb. No, no, no, indeed, madam, it is not usual; and I must depend upon my own reflection and philosophy not to overstock my family.

Mrs. Seal. I cannot help her, cousin Cimberton; but she is, for aught I see, as well as the daughter of anybody else. Cimb. That is very true, madam.

(Enter a Servant, who whispers Mrs. Sealand.)

Mrs. Seal. The lawyers are come, and now we are to hear what they have resolved as to the point whether it's necessary that Sir Geoffry should join in the settlement, as being what they call in the remainder. But, good cousin, you must have patience with 'em. These lawyers, I am told, are of a different kind; one is what they call a chamber counsel, the other a pleader. The conveyancer is slow, from an imperfection in his speech, and therefore shunned the bar, but extremely passionate and impatient of contradiction. The other is as warm as he: but has a tongue so voluble, and a head so conceited, he will suffer nobody to speak but himself.

Cimb. You mean old Serjeant Target and Counsellor Bramble? I have heard of 'em.

Mrs. Seal. The same. tlemen.

Show in the gen

(Exit Servant.)

(Re-enter Servant, introducing Myrtle and Tom disguised as Bramble and Target.)

Mrs. Seal. Gentlemen, this is the party concerned, Mr. Cimberton; and I hope you have considered of the matter. Tar. Yes, madam, we have agreed that it must be by indent- -dent- -dentdent

Bram. Yes, madam, Mr. Serjeant and myself have agreed, as he is pleased to inform you, that it must be an indenture tripartite, and tripartite let it be, for Sir