Dor. The good fortune were enough to make me vain, but that I am in my nature modest.

Bell. Hark you, Dorimant; with your leave, Mr. Medley, ’tis only a secret concerning a fair lady.

Med. Your good breeding, sir, gives you too much trouble; you might have whispered without all this ceremony.

Bell. [to Dorimant]. How stand your affairs with Belinda of late?

Dor. She’s a little jilting baggage.

Bell. Nay, I believe her false enough, but she’s ne’er the worse for your purpose; she was with you yesterday in a disguise at the play.

Dor. There we fell out, and resolved never to speak to one another more.

Bell. The occasion?

Dor. Want of courage to meet me at the place appointed. These young women apprehend loving as much as the young men do fighting at first; but once entered, like them too, they all turn bullies straight.

Enter Handy

Handy [to Bellair]. Sir, your man without desires to speak with you.

Bell. Gentlemen, I’ll return immediately.

[Exit Bellair.

Med. A very pretty fellow this.

Dor. He’s handsome, well-bred, and by much the most tolerable of all the young men that do not abound in wit.

Med. Ever well-dressed, always complaisant, and seldom impertinent; you and he are grown very intimate, I see.

Dor. It is our mutual interest to be so: it makes the women think the better of his understanding and judge more favourably of my reputation; it makes him pass upon some for a man of very good sense and I upon others for a very civil person.

Med. What was that whisper?

Dor. A thing which he would fain have known, but I did not think it fit to tell him; it might have frighted him from his honourable intentions of marrying.

Med. Emilia, give her her due, has the best reputation of any young woman about the town who has beauty enough to provoke detraction; her carriage is unaffected, her discourse modest, not at all censorious nor pretending, like the counterfeits of the age.

Dor. She’s a discreet maid, and I believe nothing can corrupt her but a husband.

Med. A husband?

Dor. Yes, a husband; I have known many women make a difficulty of losing a maidenhead who have afterwards made none of a cuckold.