第9章 SCENE I.

LADY FROTH and CYNTHIA.

CYNT. Indeed, madam! Is it possible your ladyship could have been so much in love?

LADY FROTH. I could not sleep; I did not sleep one wink for three weeks together.

CYNT. Prodigious! I wonder want of sleep, and so much love and so much wit as your ladyship has, did not turn your brain.

LADY FROTH. Oh, my dear Cynthia, you must not rally your friend.

But really, as you say, I wonder too. But then I had a way. For, between you and I, I had whimsies and vapours, but I gave them vent.

CYNT. How, pray, madam?

LADY FROTH. Oh, I writ, writ abundantly. Do you never write?

CYNT. Write what?

LADY FROTH. Songs, elegies, satires, encomiums, panegyrics, lampoons, plays, or heroic poems?

CYNT. O Lord, not I, madam; I'm content to be a courteous reader.

LADY FROTH. Oh, inconsistent! In love and not write! If my lord and I had been both of your temper, we had never come together. Oh, bless me! What a sad thing would that have been, if my lord and I should never have met!

CYNT. Then neither my lord nor you would ever have met with your match, on my conscience.

LADY FROTH. O' my conscience, no more we should; thou say'st right.

For sure my Lord Froth is as fine a gentleman and as much a man of quality! Ah! nothing at all of the common air. I think I may say he wants nothing but a blue ribbon and a star to make him shine, the very phosphorus of our hemisphere. Do you understand those two hard words? If you don't, I'll explain 'em to you.

CYNT. Yes, yes, madam, I'm not so ignorant.--At least I won't own it, to be troubled with your instructions. [Aside.]

LADY FROTH. Nay, I beg your pardon; but being derived from the Greek, I thought you might have escaped the etymology. But I'm the more amazed to find you a woman of letters and not write! Bless me! how can Mellefont believe you love him?

CYNT. Why, faith, madam, he that won't take my word shall never have it under my hand.

LADY FROTH. I vow Mellefont's a pretty gentleman, but methinks he wants a manner.

CYNT. A manner! What's that, madam?

LADY FROTH. Some distinguishing quality, as, for example, the BEL AIR or BRILLANT of Mr. Brisk; the solemnity, yet complaisance of my lord, or something of his own that should look a little JE-NE-SAIS-

QUOISH; he is too much a mediocrity, in my mind.

CYNT. He does not indeed affect either pertness or formality; for which I like him. Here he comes.

LADY FROTH. And my lord with him. Pray observe the difference.