Congreve's Comedy of Manners. William Congreve
for your sake, and you reproach me with it; I am ready to be a rogue still to do you service. And you fling conscience and honor in my face. How am I to behave?
Lady Foresight
Impudent villain. Do you dare to say this to me?
Maskwell (icily)
Look you, madame, we are alone. Contain yourself and hear me. You know you loved Valentine when I first sighed for you—but you only favored my passion through revenge and policy.
Lady Foresight
Liar! Have I not met your love with passion?
Maskwell
Only to aid your revenge on Valentine. To entice me, that I might betray him to you.
Lady Foresight
Damnation! Do you provoke me again?
Maskwell
Nay, madame, I’m gone if you relapse. I say nothing but what you yourself have confessed to me. Why should you deny it? How can you?
(Lady Foresight walks about in a fury, fanning herself.)
Maskwell
I am your slave—the slave of all your pleasures. I will prevent his marriage to Angelica.
Lady Foresight
Oh, Maskwell, in vain do I disguise myself before you—you know me—to the very inmost windings of my soul.
Maskwell
Compose yourself. You shall possess and ruin him, too. Will that please you?
Lady Foresight
How, how? You dear, you precious villain, how? Let him once be mine and immediate ruin seize him the next!
Maskwell
His father has forced him to relinquish his inheritance.
Lady Foresight
But that will not prevent Angelica from marrying him. She is a romantic fool, but she has ample fortune in her own hands.
Maskwell
You have already been tampering with Lady Froth?
Lady Foresight
I have. She is ready for any impression I think fit.
Maskwell
She must be thoroughly persuaded that Valentine loves her.
Lady Foresight
She is so credulous and she likes him—likes any man—so well that she will believe it faster than I can persuade her. She will write an epic about it. But, what can we gain that way?
Maskwell
Time. Come, we must speak of this privately.
(Exit Maskwell and Lady Foresight.)
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