Cam. But why thus melancholy, with hat pulled down, and the hand on the region of the heart, just the reverse of my friend Aurelian, of happy memory?

Aur. Faith, Camillo, I am ashamed of it, but cannot help it.

Cam. But to be in love with a waiting-woman! with an eater of fragments, a simperer at lower end of a table, with mighty golls, rough-grained, and red with starching, those discouragers and abaters of elevated love!

Aur. I could love deformity itself, with that good humour.  She, who is armed with gaiety and wit, needs no other weapon to conquer me.

Cam. We lovers are the great creators of wit in our mistresses.  For Beatrix, she is a mere utterer of yes and no, and has no more sense than what will just dignify her to be an arrant waiting-woman; that is, to lie for her lady, and take your money.

Aur. It may be, then, I found her in the exaltation of her wit; for certainly women have their good and ill days of talking, as they have of looking.

Cam. But, however, she has done you the courtesy to drive out Laura; and so one poison has expelled the other.

Aur. Troth, not absolutely neither; for I dote on Laura’s beauty, and on Beatrix’s wit:  I am wounded with a forked arrow, which will not easily be got out.

Cam. Not to lose time in fruitless complaints, let us pursue our new contrivance, that you may see your two mistresses, and I my one.

Aur. That will not now be difficult:  This plot’s so laid, that I defy the devil to make it miss.  The woman of the house, by which they are to pass to church, is bribed; the ladies are by her acquainted with the design; and we need only to be there before them, and expect the prey, which will undoubtedly fall into the net.

Cam. Your man is made safe, I hope, from doing us any mischief?

Aur. He has disposed of himself, I thank him, for an hour or two:  The fop would make me believe, that an unknown lady is in love with him, and has made him an assignation.

Cam. If he should succeed now, I should have the worse opinion of the sex for his sake.

Aur. Never doubt but he will succeed:  Your brisk fool, that can make a leg, is ever a fine gentleman among the ladies, because he is just of their talent, and they understand him better than a wit.

Cam. Peace, the ladies are coming this way to the chapel, and their jailor with them:  Let them go by without saluting, to avoid suspicion; and let us go off to prepare our engine.

  Enter MARIO, LAURA, and VIOLETTA.

Aur. I must have a look before we go.  Ah, you little divine rogue!  I’ll be with you immediately. [Exeunt AURELIAN and CAMILLO.

Vio. Look you, sister, there are our friends, but take no notice.

Lau. I saw them.  Was not that Aurelian with Camillo?