MEL. Good fortune ever go along with thee.


SCENE V.


MELLEFONT, CARELESS.

CARE. Mellefont, get out o' th' way, my Lady Plyant's coming, and I
shall never succeed while thou art in sight. Though she begins to
tack about; but I made love a great while to no purpose.

MEL. Why, what's the matter? She's convinced that I don't care for
her.

CARE. I can't get an answer from her, that does not begin with her
honour, or her virtue, her religion, or some such cant. Then she
has told me the whole history of Sir Paul's nine years courtship;
how he has lain for whole nights together upon the stairs before her
chamber-door; and that the first favour he received from her was a
piece of an old scarlet petticoat for a stomacher, which since the
day of his marriage he has out of a piece of gallantry converted
into a night-cap, and wears it still with much solemnity on his
anniversary wedding-night.

MEL. That I have seen, with the ceremony thereunto belonging. For
on that night he creeps in at the bed's feet like a gulled bassa
that has married a relation of the Grand Signior, and that night he
has his arms at liberty. Did not she tell you at what a distance