_Fan._ Stay, madam, stay--your generosity overpowers me! oh madam! you know not how wretched I am. _Hel._ What is it affects you thus?--come, if your story is of a nature that may be revealed, you are sure of sympathy. _Fan._ I never should have doubted; but my father has alarmed me sadly--he says my lord Austencourt is certainly on the point of marriage with you. _Hel._ And how, my dear girl, if it were so, could that affect you? Come, you must be explicit. _Fan._ Affect me! merciful Heaven! can I see him wed another? He is my husband by every tie sacred and human. _Hel._ Suffering, but too credulous girl! have you then trusted to his vows? _Fan._ How, madam! was I to blame, loving as I did, to trust in vows so solemn? could I suppose he would dare to break them, because our marriage was performed in secret? _Hel._ Your marriage, child! Good Heavens, you amaze me! but here we may be interrupted--this way with me. If this indeed be so all may be well again: for though he may be dead to _feeling_ be assured he is alive to _fear_: the man who once descends to be a villain is generally observed to be at heart a coward. [_Exeunt._ SCENE II.--_The door of a country inn._--Ponder _sitting on a portmanteau._ _Ponder._ I've heard that intense thinking has driven some philosophers mad!--now if this should happen to _me_, 'twill never be the fate of my young patron, Mr. Charles Austencourt, whom I have suddenly met on his sudden return from sea, and who never thinks at all. Poor gentleman, he little thinks what-- _Enter_ Charles Austencourt. _Charles._ Not gone yet? How comes it you are not on the road to my father? Is the fellow deaf or dumb. Ponder! are ye asleep? _Pon._ I'm thinking, whether I am or not. _Charles._ And what wise scheme now occupies your thoughts? _Pon._ Sir, I confess the subject is beneath me (_pointing to the portmanteau._) _Char._ The weight of the portmanteau, I suppose, alarms you. _Pon._ If that was my heaviest misfortune, sir, I could carry double with all my heart. No, sir, I was thinking that as your father, sir Rowland, sent you on a cruize, for some cause best known to himself; and as you have thought proper to return for some cause best known to _yourself_, the chances of war, if I may be allowed the expression, are, that the contents of that trunk will be your only inheritance, or, in other words, that your father will cut you off with a shilling--and now I'm thinking-- _Char._ No doubt--thinking takes up so many of your waking hours, that you seldom find time for _doing_. And so you have, since my departure, turned your thinking faculties to the law. _Pon._ Yes, sir; when you gave me notice to quit, I found it so hard to live honestly, that lest the law should take to me, I took to the law: and so articled my self to Mr. O'Dedimus, the attorney in our town: but there is a thought unconnected with law that has occupied my head every moment since we met.