MRS. MAR. O my shame! [MIRABELL _and_ LADY _go to_ MRS. FAINALL _and_
FOIBLE.] These currupt things are brought hither to expose me. [_To_
FAINALL.]
FAIN. If it must all come out, why let ’em know it, ’tis but the way of
the world. That shall not urge me to relinquish or abate one tittle of
my terms; no, I will insist the more.
FOIB. Yes, indeed, madam; I’ll take my bible-oath of it.
MINC. And so will I, mem.
LADY. O Marwood, Marwood, art thou false? My friend deceive me? Hast
thou been a wicked accomplice with that profligate man?
MRS. MAR. Have you so much ingratitude and injustice to give credit,
against your friend, to the aspersions of two such mercenary trulls?
MINC. Mercenary, mem? I scorn your words. ’Tis true we found you and
Mr. Fainall in the blue garret; by the same token, you swore us to
secrecy upon Messalinas’s poems. Mercenary? No, if we would have been
mercenary, we should have held our tongues; you would have bribed us
sufficiently.
FAIN. Go, you are an insignificant thing. Well, what are you the better
for this? Is this Mr. Mirabell’s expedient? I’ll be put off no longer.
You, thing, that was a wife, shall smart for this. I will not leave thee
wherewithal to hide thy shame: your body shall be naked as your
reputation.
MRS. FAIN. I despise you and defy your malice. You have aspersed me
wrongfully—I have proved your falsehood. Go, you and your treacherous—I
will not name it, but starve together. Perish.
FAIN. Not while you are worth a groat, indeed, my dear. Madam, I’ll be
fooled no longer.
LADY. Ah, Mr. Mirabell, this is small comfort, the detection of this
affair.
MIRA. Oh, in good time. Your leave for the other offender and penitent
to appear, madam.
SCENE XII.
[_To them_] WAITWELL _with a box of writings_.
LADY. O Sir Rowland! Well, rascal?
WAIT. What your ladyship pleases. I have brought the black box at last,
madam.
MIRA. Give it me. Madam, you remember your promise.
LADY. Ay, dear sir.
MIRA. Where are the gentlemen?
WAIT. At hand, sir, rubbing their eyes,—just risen from sleep.
FAIN. ’Sdeath, what’s this to me? I’ll not wait your private concerns.
SCENE XIII.
[_To them_] PETULANT, WITWOUD.
PET. How now? What’s the matter? Whose hand’s out?
WIT. Hey day! What, are you all got together, like players at the end
of the last act?
MIRA. You may remember, gentlemen, I once requested your hands as
witnesses to a certain parchment.
WIT. Ay, I do, my hand I remember—Petulant set his mark.
MIRA. You wrong him; his name is fairly written, as shall appear. You
do not remember, gentlemen, anything of what that parchment contained?
[_Undoing the box_.]
WIT. No.
PET. Not I. I writ; I read nothing.
MIRA. Very well, now you shall know. Madam, your promise.
LADY. Ay, ay, sir, upon my honour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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