Lady. I warrant you, or she would never have born to have been catechised by him; and have heard his long lectures against singing and dancing, and such debaucheries; and going to filthy plays; and prophane musick-meetings, where the lewd trebles squeek nothing but bawdy, and the bases roar blasphemy. O, she would have swooned at the sight or name of an obscene play-book—and can I think after all this, that my daughter can be naught? What, a whore? And thought it excommunication to set her foot within the door of a play-house. O dear friend, I can’t believe it, no, no; as she says, let him prove it, let him prove it.

Mrs. Mar. Prove it, madam? What, and have your name prostituted in a publick court; yours and your daughter’s reputation worried at the bar by a pack of bawling lawyers? To be ushered in with an O yes of scandal; and have your case opened by an old fumbling leacher in a quoif like a man midwife, to bring your daughter’s infamy to light; to be a theme for legal punsters, and quiblers by the statute; and become a jest, against a rule of court, where there is no precedent for a jest in any record; not even in Doomsday Book: to discompose the gravity of the bench, and provoke naughty interrogatories in more naughty law Latin; while the good judge, tickled with the proceeding, simpers under a grey beard, and figes off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides, or sate upon cowitch.

Lady. O, ’tis very hard!

Mrs. Mar. And then to have my young revellers of the Temple take notes, like prentices at a conventicle; and after talk it over again in Commons, or before drawers in an eating-house.

Lady. Worse and worse.

Mrs. Mar. Nay, this is nothing; if it would end here ’twere well. But it must after this be consigned by the shorthand writers to the publick press; and from thence be transferred to the hands, nay, into the throats and lungs of hawkers, with voices more licentious than the loud flounder-man’s: and this you must hear ’till you are stunned; nay, you must hear nothing else for some days.

Lady. O, ’tis insupportable. No, no, dear friend, make it up, make it up; ay, ay, I’ll compound. I’ll give up all, myself and my all, my niece and her all—anything, everything for composition.

Mrs. Mar. Nay, madam, I advise nothing, I only lay before you, as a friend, the inconveniencies which perhaps you have overseen. Here comes Mr. Fainall, if he will be satisfied to huddle up all in silence, I shall be glad. You must think I would rather congratulate than condole with you.

SCENE VI

Fainall, Lady Wishfort, Mrs. Marwood.

Lady. Ay, ay, I do not doubt it, dear Marwood: no, no, I do not doubt it.

Fain. Well, madam; I have suffered myself to be overcome by the importunity of this lady your friend; and am content you shall enjoy your own proper estate during life; on condition you oblige yourself never to marry, under such penalty as I think convenient.

Lady. Never to marry?

Fain. No more Sir Rowlands.—the next imposture may not be so timely detected.

Mrs. Mar. That condition, I dare answer, my lady will consent to, without difficulty; she has already but too much experienced the perfidiousness of men. Besides, madam, when we retire to our pastoral solitude we shall bid adieu to all other thoughts.

Lady. Ay, that’s true; but in case of necessity; as of health, or some such emergency—