SILV. Respects, and peruse it! He’s gone, and Araminta has bewitched him from me. Oh, how the name of rival fires my blood. I could curse ’em both; eternal jealousy attend her love, and disappointment meet his. Oh that I could revenge the torment he has caused; methinks I feel the woman strong within me, and vengeance kindles in the room of love. LUCY. I have that in my head may make mischief. SILV. How, dear Lucy? LUCY. You know Araminta’s dissembled coyness has won, and keeps him hers— SILV. Could we persuade him that she loves another— LUCY. No, you’re out; could we persuade him that she dotes on him, himself. Contrive a kind letter as from her, ’twould disgust his nicety, and take away his stomach. SILV. Impossible; ’twill never take. LUCY. Trouble not your head. Let me alone—I will inform myself of what passed between ’em to-day, and about it straight. Hold, I’m mistaken, or that’s Heartwell, who stands talking at the corner—’tis he—go get you in, madam, receive him pleasantly, dress up your face in innocence and smiles, and dissemble the very want of dissimulation. You know what will take him. SILV. ’Tis as hard to counterfeit love as it is to conceal it: but I’ll do my weak endeavour, though I fear I have not art. LUCY. Hang art, madam, and trust to nature for dissembling. Man was by nature woman’s cully made: We never are but by ourselves betrayed. SCENE II. HEARTWELL, VAINLOVE _and_ BELLMOUR _following_. BELL. Hist, hist, is not that Heartwell going to Silvia? VAIN. He’s talking to himself, I think; prithee let’s try if we can hear him. HEART. Why, whither in the devil’s name am I agoing now? Hum—let me think—is not this Silvia’s house, the cave of that enchantress, and which consequently I ought to shun as I would infection? To enter here is to put on the envenomed shirt, to run into the embraces of a fever, and in some raving fit, be led to plunge myself into that more consuming fire, a woman’s arms. Ha! well recollected, I will recover my reason, and be gone. BELL. Now Venus forbid! VAIN. Hush— HEART. Well, why do you not move? Feet, do your office—not one inch; no, fore Gad I’m caught. There stands my north, and thither my needle points. Now could I curse myself, yet cannot repent. O thou delicious, damned, dear, destructive woman! S’death, how the young fellows will hoot me! I shall be the jest of the town: nay, in two days I expect to be chronicled in ditty, and sung in woful ballad, to the tune of the Superannuated Maiden’s Comfort, or the Bachelor’s Fall; and upon the third, I shall be hanged in effigy, pasted up for the exemplary ornament of necessary houses and cobblers’ stalls. Death, I can’t think on’t—I’ll run into the danger to lose the apprehension. SCENE III. BELLMOUR, VAINLOVE.