_Bev. Jun._ Very well, do you step again, and wait for an answer to my letter. [_Exit_ TOM. _Enter_ MYRTLE. _Bev. Jun._ Well, Charles, why so much care in thy countenance? Is there anything in this world deserves it? You, who used to be so gay, so open, so vacant! _Myrt._ I think we have of late changed complexions. You, who used to be much the graver man, are now all air in your behaviour.--But the cause of my concern may, for aught I know, be the same object that gives you all this satisfaction. In a word, I am told that you are this very day--and your dress confirms me in it--to be married to Lucinda. _Bev. Jun._ You are not misinformed.--Nay, put not on the terrors of a rival till you hear me out. I shall disoblige the best of fathers if I don't seem ready to marry Lucinda; and you know I have ever told you you might make use of my secret resolution never to marry her for your own service as you please; but I am now driven to the extremity of immediately refusing or complying unless you help me to escape the match. _Myrt._ Escape? Sir, neither her merit or her fortune are below your acceptance--Escaping do you call it? _Bev. Jun._ Dear sir, do you wish I should desire the match? _Myrt._ No; but such is my humorous and sickly state of mind since it has been able to relish nothing but Lucinda, that though I must owe my happiness to your aversion to this marriage, I can't bear to hear her spoken of with levity or unconcern. _Bev. Jun._ Pardon me, sir, I shall transgress that way no more. She has understanding, beauty, shape, complexion, wit---- _Myrt._ Nay, dear Bevil, don't speak of her as if you loved her neither. _Bev. Jun._ Why, then, to give you ease at once, though I allow Lucinda to have good sense, wit, beauty, and virtue, I know another in whom these qualities appear to me more amiable than in her. _Myrt._ There you spoke like a reasonable and good-natured friend. When you acknowledge her merit, and own your prepossession for another, at once you gratify my fondness and cure my jealousy. _Bev. Jun._ But all this while you take no notice, you have no apprehension, of another man that has twice the fortune of either of us. _Myrt._ Cimberton![127] hang him, a formal, philosophical, pedantic coxcomb; for the sot, with all these crude notions of divers things, under the direction of great vanity and very little judgment, shows his strongest bias is avarice; which is so predominant in him that he will examine the limbs of his mistress with the caution of a jockey, and pays no more compliment to her personal charms than if she were a mere breeding animal. _Bev. Jun._ Are you sure that is not affected? I have known some women sooner set on fire by that sort of negligence than by---- _Myrt._ No, no; hang him, the rogue has no art; it is pure, simple insolence and stupidity. _Bev. Jun._ Yet, with all this, I don't take him for a fool.