"_Mellefont._ For heaven's sake, madam. _Lady Plyant._ O, name it no more!--Bless me, how can you talk of heaven! and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be you don't think it a sin.--They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin.--May be it is no sin to them that don't think it so; indeed, if I did not think it a sin--but still my honour, if it were no sin.--But then, to marry my daughter, for the conveniency of frequent opportunities, I'll never consent to that; as sure as can be I'll break the match. _Mel._ Death and amazement.--Madam, upon my knees. _Lady P._ Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion: 'tis not your fault; nor I swear it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms? and how can you help it if you are made a captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault. But my honour--well, but your honour too--but the sin!--well, but the necessity--O Lord, here is somebody coming, I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against it--strive, be sure--but don't be melancholic, don't despair.--But never think that I'll grant you anything; O Lord, no.--But be sure you lay aside all thoughts of the marriage: for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind to your passion for me, yet it will make me jealous.--O Lord, what did I say? jealous! no, no; I can't be jealous, for I must not love you--therefore don't hope--but don't despair neither.--O, they're coming! I must fly."[354] She escapes and we will not follow her. This giddiness, this volubility, this pretty corruption, these reckless and affected airs, are collected in the most brilliant, the most worldly portrait of the stage we are discussing, that of Mrs. Millamant, "a fine lady," as the Dramatis Personæ say.[355] She enters, "with her fan spread and her streamers out," dragging a train of furbelows and ribbons, passing through a crowd of laced and bedizened fops, in splendid perukes, who flutter about her path, haughty and wanton, witty and scornful, toying with gallantries, petulant, with a horror of every grave word and all nobility of action, falling in only with change and pleasure. She laughs at the sermons of Mirabell, her suitor: "Sententious Mirabell!--Prithee don't look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry-hanging.[356]... Ha! ha! ha!--pardon me, dear creature, though I grant you 'tis a little barbarous, ha! ha! ha!"[357] She breaks out into laughter, then gets into a rage, then banters, then sings, then makes faces, and changes at every motion while we look at her. It is a regular whirlpool; all turns round in her brain as in a clock when the mainspring is broken. Nothing can be prettier than her fashion of entering on matrimony: