LADY PLYANT. Oh, yonder he comes reading of it; for heaven's sake
step in here and advise me quickly before he sees.


SCENE IX.


SIR PAUL with the Letter.

SIR PAUL. O Providence, what a conspiracy have I discovered. But
let me see to make an end on't. [Reads.] Hum--After supper in the
wardrobe by the gallery. If Sir Paul should surprise us, I have a
commission from him to treat with you about the very matter of fact.
Matter of fact! Very pretty; it seems that I am conducting to my
own cuckoldom. Why, this is the very traitorous position of taking
up arms by my authority, against my person! Well, let me see. Till
then I languish in expectation of my adored charmer.--Dying Ned
Careless. Gads-bud, would that were matter of fact too. Die and be
damned for a Judas Maccabeus and Iscariot both. O friendship! what
art thou but a name? Henceforward let no man make a friend that
would not be a cuckold: for whomsoever he receives into his bosom
will find the way to his bed, and there return his caresses with
interest to his wife. Have I for this been pinioned, night after
night for three years past? Have I been swathed in blankets till I
have been even deprived of motion? Have I approached the marriage
bed with reverence as to a sacred shrine, and denied myself the
enjoyment of lawful domestic pleasures to preserve its purity, and
must I now find it polluted by foreign iniquity? O my Lady Plyant,
you were chaste as ice, but you are melted now, and false as water.
But Providence has been constant to me in discovering this