SCENE I

Enter Mistress LOVEIT and PERT, her woman.

Pert. Well, in my eyes Sir Fopling is no such despicable person.

Lov. You are an excellent judge!

Pert. He’s as handsome a man as Mr. Dorimant, and as great a gallant.

Lov. Intolerable! is’t not enough I submit to his impertinences, but I must be plagued with yours too?

Pert. Indeed, madam—

Lov. ’Tis false, mercenary malice—

Enter her Footman.

Footman. Mrs. Belinda, madam

Lov. What of her?

Footman. She’s below.

Lov. How came she?

Footman. In a chair; ambling Harry brought her.

Lov. He bring her! His chair stands near Dorimant’s door, and always brings me from thence—Run and ask him where he took her up; go, there is no truth in friendship neither. Women as well as men—all are false, or all are so to me at least.

Pert. You are jealous of her too.

Lov. You had best tell her I am. ’Twill become the liberty you take of late. This fellow’s bringing of her, her going out by five o’clock—I know not what to think.

Enter BELINDA. Belinda, you are grown an early riser, I hear.

Bel. Do you not wonder, my dear, what made me abroad so soon?

Lov. You do not use to be so.

Bel. The country gentlewomen I told you of (Lord! they have the oddest diversions!) would never let me rest till I promised to go with them to the markets this morning to eat fruit and buy nosegays.

Lov. Are they so fond of a filthy nosegay?

Bel. They complain of the stinks of the town, and are never well but when they have their noses in one.

Lov. There are essences and sweet waters.

Bel. Oh! they cry out upon perfumes they are unwholesome, one of ’em was falling into a fit with the smell of these narolii.

Lov. Methinks, in complaisance you should have had a nosegay too.