_Eliza._ No, you need not fear yet, I'll keep your secret. _Oliv._ My secret! I'd have you to know, I have no need of confidants, though you value yourself upon being a good one. _Eliza._ O admirable confidence! you show more in denying your wickedness, than other people in glorying in't. _Oliv._ Confidence, to me! to me such language! nay, then I'll never see your face again.--[_Aside._] I'll quarrel with her, that people may never believe I was in her power; but take for malice all the truth she may speak against me.--[_Aloud._] Lettice, where are you! Let us be gone from this censorious ill woman. _Eliza._ [_Aside._] Nay, thou shalt stay a little, to damn thyself quite.--[_Aloud._] One word first, pray, madam; can you swear that whom your husband found you with-- _Oliv._ Swear! ay, that whosoever 'twas that stole up, unknown, into my room, when 'twas dark, I know not, whether man or woman, by Heavens! by all that's good; or, may I never more have joys here, or in the other world! Nay, may I eternally-- _Eliza._ Be damned. So, so, you are damned enough already by your oaths; and I enough confirmed, and now you may please to be gone. Yet take this advice with you, in this plain-dealing age, to leave off forswearing yourself; for when people hardly think the better of a woman for her real modesty, why should you put that great constraint upon yourself to feign it? _Oliv._ O hideous, hideous advice! let us go out of the hearing of it. She will spoil us, Lettice. [_Exeunt_ OLIVIA _and_ LETTICE _at one door_, ELIZA _at the other._ SCENE II.--_The Cock in Bow Street. A table and bottles._ _Enter_ MANLY _and_ FIDELIA. _Man._ How! saved her honour by making her husband believe you were a woman! 'Twas well, but hard enough to do, sure. _Fid._ We were interrupted before he could contradict me. _Man._ But can't you tell me, d'ye say, what kind of man he was? _Fid._ I was so frightened, I confess, I can give no other account of him, but that he was pretty tall, round-faced, and one, I'm sure, I ne'er had seen before. _Man._ But she, you say, made you swear to return to-night? _Fid._ But I have since sworn, never to go near her again; for the husband would murder me, or worse, if he caught me again. _Man._ No, I will go with you, and defend you to-night, and then I'll swear, too, never to go near her again. _Fid._ Nay, indeed, sir, I will not go, to be accessory to your death too. Besides, what should you go again, sir, for?