Wood. Yes, the second part of the same tune!  Strike by yourself, sweet larum; you’re true bell-metal I warrant you. [Exit.

Pleas. This spitefulness of mine will be my ruin:  To rail them off, was well enough; but to talk him away, too!  O tongue, tongue, thou wert given for a curse to all our sex!

Enter JUDITH.

Jud. Madam, your mother would speak with you.

Pleas. I will not come; I’m mad, I think; I come immediately.  Well,
I’ll go in, and vent my passion, by railing at them, and him too.
          
                                                    [Exit.

Jud. You may enter in safety, sir; the enemy’s marched off.

Re-enter WOODALL.

Wood. Nothing, but the love I bear thy mistress, could keep me in the house with such a fury.  When will the bright nymph appear?

Jud. Immediately; I hear her coming.

Wood. That I could find her coming, Mrs Judith!

  Enter MRS BRAINSICK.

You have made me languish in expectation, madam.  Was it nothing, do you think, to be so near a happiness, with violent desires, and to be delayed?

Mrs Brain. Is it nothing, do you think, for a woman of honour, to overcome the ties of virtue and reputation; to do that for you, which I thought I should never have ventured for the sake of any man?

Wood. But my comfort is, that love has overcome.  Your honour is, in other words, but your good repute; and ’tis my part to take care of that:  for the fountain of a woman’s honour is in the lover, as that of the subject is in the king.

Mrs Brain. You had concluded well, if you had been my husband:  you know where our subjection lies.

Wood. But cannot I be yours without a priest?  They were cunning people, doubtless, who began that trade; to have a double hank upon us, for two worlds:  that no pleasure here, or hereafter, should be had, without a bribe to them.

Mrs Brain. Well, I’m resolved, I’ll read, against the next time I see you; for the truth is, I am not very well prepared with arguments for marriage; meanwhile, farewell.

Wood. I stand corrected; you have reason indeed to go, if I can use my time no better:  We’ll withdraw if you please, and dispute the rest within.

Mrs Brain. Perhaps, I meant not so.

Wood, I understand your meaning at your eyes.  You’ll watch, Judith?

Mrs Brain. Nay, if that were all, I expect not my husband till to-morrow.  The truth is, he is so oddly humoured, that, if I were ill inclined, it would half justify a woman; he’s such a kind of man!

Wood. Or, if he be not, well make him such a kind of man.

Mrs Brain. So fantastical, so musical, his talk all rapture, and half nonsense:  like a clock out of order, set him a-going, and he strikes eternally.  Besides, he thinks me such a fool, that I could half resolve to revenge myself, in justification of my wit.