aven,
Some drops are due--and then I sleep in peace,
Reliev'd from frightful dreams, my dreams though sad.
[_Exit_.]

MRS. FRAMPTON
I have gone too far. Who knows but in this mood
She may forestall my story, win on Selby
By a frank confession?--and the time draws on
For our appointed meeting. The game's desperate,
For which I play. A moment's difference
May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him.
[_Exit._]

SCENE.--_A Garden_.

MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON.

SELBY
I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton,
Not to conjecture, that some passages
In your unfinished story, rightly interpreted,
Glanced at my bosom's peace;
You knew my wife?

MRS. FRAMPTON
Even from her earliest school-days.--What of that?
Or how is she concerned in my fine riddles,
Framed for the hour's amusement?

SELBY
By my _hopes_
Of my new interest conceived in you,
And by the honest passion of my heart,
Which not obliquely I to you did hint;
Come from the clouds of misty allegory,
And in plain language let me hear the worst.
Stand I disgraced or no?

MRS. FRAMPTON
Then, by _my_ hopes
Of my new interest conceiv'd in you,
And by the kindling passion in _my_ breast,
Which through my riddles you had almost read,
Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all.
In her school years, then bordering on fifteen,
Or haply not much past, she loved a youth--

SELBY
My most ingenuous Widow--

MRS. FRAMPTON
Met him oft
By stealth, where I still of the party was--

SELBY
Prime confidant to all the school, I warrant,
And general go-between--
[_Aside_.]

MRS. FRAMPTON
One morn he came
In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail,
Or in few hours would be, that must convey
Him and his destinies to barbarous shores,
Where, should he perish by inglorious hands,
It would be consolation in his death
To have call'd his Katherine _his_."

SELBY
Thus far the story
Tallies with what I hoped.
[_Aside_.]

MRS. FRAMPTON
Wavering between
The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him;
And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged,
Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's part;--