LADY PLYANT. Dishonourable, impudent creature! MEL. For heav'n's sake, madam, to whom do you direct this language? LADY PLYANT. Have I behaved myself with all the decorum and nicety befitting the person of Sir Paul's wife? Have I preserved my honour as it were in a snow-house for these three years past? Have I been white and unsullied even by Sir Paul himself? SIR PAUL. Nay, she has been an invincible wife, even to me; that's the truth on't. LADY PLYANT. Have I, I say, preserved myself like a fair sheet of paper for you to make a blot upon? SIR PAUL. And she shall make a simile with any woman in England. MEL. I am so amazed, I know not what to say. SIR PAUL. Do you think my daughter, this pretty creature--gadsbud, she's a wife for a cherubim!--do you think her fit for nothing but to be a stalking horse, to stand before you, while you take aim at my wife? Gadsbud, I was never angry before in my life, and I'll never be appeased again. MEL. Hell and damnation! This is my aunt; such malice can be engendered nowhere else. [_Aside_.] LADY PLYANT. Sir Paul, take Cynthia from his sight; leave me to strike him with the remorse of his intended crime. CYNT. Pray, sir, stay, hear him; I dare affirm he's innocent. SIR PAUL. Innocent! Why, hark'ee--come hither, Thy--hark'ee, I had it from his aunt, my sister Touchwood. Gadsbud, he does not care a farthing for anything of thee but thy portion. Why, he's in love with my wife. He would have tantalised thee, and made a cuckold of thy poor father, and that would certainly have broke my heart. I'm sure, if ever I should have horns, they would kill me; they would never come kindly--I should die of 'em like a child that was cutting his teeth--I should indeed, Thy--therefore come away; but providence has prevented all, therefore come away when I bid you. CYNT. I must obey. SCENE V. LADY PLYANT, MELLEFONT. LADY PLYANT. Oh, such a thing! the impiety of it startles me--to wrong so good, so fair a creature, and one that loves you tenderly--'tis a barbarity of barbarities, and nothing could be guilty of it-- MEL. But the greatest villain imagination can form, I grant it; and next to the villainy of such a fact is the villainy of aspersing me with the guilt. How? which way was I to wrong her? For yet I understand you not. LADY PLYANT. Why, gads my life, cousin Mellefont, you cannot be so peremptory as to deny it, when I tax you with it to your face? for now Sir Paul's gone, you are _corum nobus_. MEL. By heav'n, I love her more than life or-- LADY PLYANT. Fiddle faddle, don't tell me of this and that, and everything in the world, but give me mathemacular demonstration; answer me directly. But I have not patience. Oh, the impiety of it, as I was saying, and the unparalleled wickedness! O merciful Father! How could you think to reverse nature so, to make the daughter the means of procuring the mother? MEL. The daughter to procure the mother!