MRS. MAR. ’Twere better so indeed. Or what think you of the playhouse? A fine gay glossy fool should be given there, like a new masking habit, after the masquerade is over, and we have done with the disguise. For a fool’s visit is always a disguise, and never admitted by a woman of wit, but to blind her affair with a lover of sense. If you would but appear barefaced now, and own Mirabell, you might as easily put off Petulant and Witwoud as your hood and scarf. And indeed ’tis time, for the town has found it, the secret is grown too big for the pretence. ’Tis like Mrs. Primly’s great belly: she may lace it down before, but it burnishes on her hips. Indeed, Millamant, you can no more conceal it than my Lady Strammel can her face, that goodly face, which in defiance of her Rhenish-wine tea will not be comprehended in a mask. MILLA. I’ll take my death, Marwood, you are more censorious than a decayed beauty, or a discarded toast:—Mincing, tell the men they may come up. My aunt is not dressing here; their folly is less provoking than your malice. SCENE XI. MRS. MILLAMANT, MRS. MARWOOD. MILLA. The town has found it? What has it found? That Mirabell loves me is no more a secret than it is a secret that you discovered it to my aunt, or than the reason why you discovered it is a secret. MRS. MAR. You are nettled. MILLA. You’re mistaken. Ridiculous! MRS. MAR. Indeed, my dear, you’ll tear another fan, if you don’t mitigate those violent airs. MILLA. O silly! Ha, ha, ha! I could laugh immoderately. Poor Mirabell! His constancy to me has quite destroyed his complaisance for all the world beside. I swear I never enjoined it him to be so coy. If I had the vanity to think he would obey me, I would command him to show more gallantry: ’tis hardly well-bred to be so particular on one hand and so insensible on the other. But I despair to prevail, and so let him follow his own way. Ha, ha, ha! Pardon me, dear creature, I must laugh; ha, ha, ha! Though I grant you ’tis a little barbarous; ha, ha, ha! MRS. MAR. What pity ’tis so much fine raillery, and delivered with so significant gesture, should be so unhappily directed to miscarry. MILLA. Heh? Dear creature, I ask your pardon. I swear I did not mind you. MRS. MAR. Mr. Mirabell and you both may think it a thing impossible, when I shall tell him by telling you— MILLA. Oh dear, what? For it is the same thing, if I hear it. Ha, ha, ha! MRS. MAR. That I detest him, hate him, madam. MILLA. O madam, why, so do I. And yet the creature loves me, ha, ha, ha! How can one forbear laughing to think of it? I am a sibyl if I am not amazed to think what he can see in me. I’ll take my death, I think you are handsomer, and within a year or two as young. If you could but stay for me, I should overtake you—but that cannot be. Well, that thought makes me melancholic.—Now I’ll be sad. MRS. MAR. Your merry note may be changed sooner than you think.