Lucy.  The gentlest means Are still the wisest.  What, if you should press Your wife to a disclosure?

Selby.  I have tried
All gentler means; thrown out low hints, which, though
Merely suggestions still, have never fail’d
To blanch her cheek with fears.  Roughlier to insist,
Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal.

Lucy.  Your own description gave that Widow out
As one not much precise, nor over-coy,
And nice to listen to a suit of love. 
What if you feign’d a courtship, putting on,
(To work the secret from her easy faith,)
For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming?

Selby.  I see your drift, and partly meet your counsel. 
But must it not in me appear prodigious,
To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious,
To move hot love, where I have shown cool scorn,
And undissembled looks of blank aversion?

Lucy.  Vain woman is the dupe of her own charms,
And easily credits the resistless power,
That in besieging beauty lies, to cast down
The slight-built fortress of a casual hate.

Selby.  I am resolved—­

Lucy.  Success attend your wooing!

Selby.  And I’ll about it roundly, my wise sister.
          
                                             [Exeunt.

SCENE.—­The Library.

MR. SELBY.  MRS. FRAMPTON.

Selby.  A fortunate encounter, Mistress Frampton.  My purpose was, if you could spare so much From your sweet leisure, a few words in private.

Mrs. F. What mean his alter’d tones?  These looks to me,
Whose glances yet he has repell’d with coolness? 
Is the wind changed?  I’ll veer about with it,
And meet him in all fashions. [Aside. 
                               All my leisure,
Feebly bestow’d upon my kind friends here,
Would not express a tithe of the obligements
I every hour incur.

Selby.  No more of that.  I know not why, my wife hath lost of late Much of her cheerful spirits.

Mrs. F. It was my topic
To-day; and every day, and all day long,
I still am chiding with her.  “Child,” I said,
And said it pretty roundly—­it may be
I was too peremptory—­we elder school-fellows,
Presuming on the advantage of a year
Or two, which, in that tender time, seem’d much,
In after years, much like to elder sisters,
Are prone to keep the authoritative style,
When time has made the difference most ridiculous—­

Selby.  The observation’s shrewd.

Mrs. F. “Child,” I was saying,
“If some wives had obtain’d a lot like yours,”
And then perhaps I sigh’d, “they would not sit
In corners moping, like to sullen moppets,
That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look
Their cheerful husbands in the face,” perhaps
I said, their Selbys, “with proportion’d looks
Of honest joy.”