The Man of Mode

Lov. I walked last night with Sir Fopling.

Dor. You did, madam, and you talked and laughed aloud, ha, ha, ha!—Oh! that laugh! that laugh becomes the confidence of a woman of quality.

Lov. You, who have more pleasure in the ruin of a woman’s reputation than in the endearments of her love, reproach me not with yourself, and I defy you to name the man can lay a blemish on my fame.

Dor. To be seen publicly so transported with the vain follies of that notorious fop, to me is an infamy below the sin of prostitution with another man.

Lov. Rail on, I am satisfied in the justice of what I did; you had provoked me to’t.

Dor. What I did was the effect of a passion whose extravagances you have been willing to forgive.

Lov. And what I did was the effect of a passion you may forgive if you think fit.

Dor. Are you so indifferent grown?

Lov. I am.

Dor. Nay! then ’tis time to part. I’ll send you back your letters you have so often asked for. I have two or three of ’em about me.

Lov. Give ’em me.

Dor. You snatch as if you thought I would not—there— and may the perjuries in ’em be mine if e’er I see you more.

[Offers to go, she catches him.

Lov. Stay!

Dor. I will not.

Lov. You shall.

Dor. What have you to say?

Lov. I cannot speak it yet.

Dor. Something more in commendation of the fool. Death! I want patience, let me go.

Lov. [aside]. I cannot. I can sooner part with the limbs that hold him. I hate that nauseous fool, you know I do.

Dor. Was it the scandal you were fond of then?

Lov. You’d raised my anger equal to my love, a thing you ne’er could do before, and in revenge I did—I know not what I did.—Would you would not think on’t any more!

Dor. Should I be willing to forget it, I shall be daily minded of it, ’twill be a commonplace for all the town to laugh at me; and Medley, when he is rhetorically drunk, will ever be declaiming on it in my ears.

Lov. ’Twill be believed a jealous spite! Come, forget it.