Dor. An excuse I am going to send her for the neglect I am guilty of.

Med. Prithee read it.

Dor. No; but if you will take the pains you may.

Med. [reads]. “I never was a lover of business, but now I have a just reason to hate it, since it has kept me these two days from seeing you. I intend to wait upon you in the afternoon, and in the pleasure of your conversation forget all I have suffered during this tedious absence.” This business of yours, Dorimant, has been with a vizard at the playhouse; I have had an eye on you. If some malicious body should betray you, this kind note would hardly make your peace with her.

Dor. I desire no better.

Med. Why, would her knowledge of it oblige you?

Dor. Most infinitely; next to the coming to a good understanding with a new mistress, I love a quarrel with an old one; but the devil’s in’t, there has been such a calm in my affairs of late, I have not had the pleasure of making a woman so much as break her fan, to be sullen, or forswear herself these three days.

Med. A very great misfortune. Let me see, I love mischief well enough to forward this business myself; I’ll about it presently and though I know the truth of what you’ve done will set her a-raving, I’ll heighten it a little with invention, leave her in a fit o’ the mother, and be here again before you’re ready.

Dor. Pray stay; you may spare yourself the labour; the business is undertaken already by one who will manage it with as much address, and I think with a little more malice than you can.

Med. Who i’ the devil’s name can this be?

Dor. Why the vizard—that very vizard you saw me with.

Med. Does she love mischief so well as to betray herself to spite another?

Dor. Not so neither, Medley. I will make you comprehend the mystery: this mask, for a farther confirmation of what I have been these two days swearing to her, made me yesterday at the playhouse make her a promise before her face utterly to break off with Loveit; and because she tenders my reputation, and would not have me do a barbarous thing, has contrived a way to give me a handsome occasion.

Med. Very good.

Dor. She intends, about an hour before me, this afternoon to make Loveit a visit, and (having the privilege, by reason of a professed friendship between ’em) to talk of her concerns.

Med. Is she a friend?

Dor. Oh, an intimate friend!

Med. Better and better; pray proceed.

Dor. She means insensibly to insinuate a discourse of me, and artificially raise her jealousy to such a height, that transported with the first motions of her passion, she shall fly upon me with all the fury imaginable as soon as ever I enter; the quarrel being thus happily begun, I am to play my part, confess and justify all my roguery, swear her impertinence and ill-humour makes her intolerable, tax her with the next fop that comes into my head, and in a huff march away; slight her, and leave her to be taken by whosoever thinks it worth his time to lie down before her.