ute him, when he wakes up in a morning;
Or bid "good-night" to John. Who seeks to live
In amity with thee, must for thy sake
Abide the world's reproach. What then?
Shall Margaret join the clamours of the world
Against her friend? O undiscerning world,
That cannot from misfortune separate guilt,
No, not in thought! O never, never, John.
Prepar'd to share the fortunes of her friend
_For better or for worse_ thy Margaret comes,
To pour into thy wounds a healing love,
And wake the memory of an ancient friendship.
And pardon me, thou spirit of Sir Walter,
Who, in compassion to the wretched living,
Have but few tears to waste upon the dead.

SCENE.--_Woodvil Hall_.

SANDFORD. MARGARET.

(_As from a Journey_.)

SANDFORD
The violence of the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by
nature is allied to nothing less than a self-debasing humour of
dejection, that I have never seen any thing more changed and
spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the
partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to
their most earnest solicitings, and will be seen by none. He keeps ever
alone, and his grief (which is solitary) does not so much seem to
possess and govern in him, as it is by him, with a wilfulness of most
manifest affection, entertained and cherished.

MARGARET
How bears he up against the common rumour?

SANDFORD
With a strange indifference, which whosoever dives not into the niceness
of his sorrow might mistake for obdurate and insensate. Yet are the
wings of his pride for ever clipt; and yet a virtuous predominance of
filial grief is so ever uppermost, that you may discover his thoughts
less troubled with conjecturing what living opinions will say, and judge
of his deeds, than absorbed and buried with the dead, whom his
indiscretion made so.

MARGARET
I knew a greatness ever to be resident in him, to which the admiring
eyes of men should look up even in the declining and bankrupt state of
his pride. Fain would I see him, fain talk with him; but that a sense of
respect, which is violated, when without deliberation we press into the
society of the unhappy, checks and holds me back. How, think you, he
would bear my presence?

SANDFORD
As of an assured friend, whom in the forgetfulness of his fortunes he
past by. See him you must; but not to-night. The newness of the sight
shall move the bitterest c