t windings and recesses of my soul. O
Mellefont! I burn; married to morrow! Despair strikes me. Yet my soul
knows I hate him too: let him but once be mine, and next immediate ruin
seize him.

MASK. Compose yourself, you shall possess and ruin him too,--will that
please you?

LADY TOUCH. How, how? Thou dear, thou precious villain, how?

MASK. You have already been tampering with my Lady Plyant.

LADY TOUCH. I have: she is ready for any impression I think fit.

MASK. She must be throughly persuaded that Mellefont loves her.

LADY TOUCH. She is so credulous that way naturally, and likes him so
well, that she will believe it faster than I can persuade her. But I
don't see what you can propose from such a trifling design, for her first
conversing with Mellefont will convince her of the contrary.

MASK. I know it. I don't depend upon it. But it will prepare something
else, and gain us leisure to lay a stronger plot. If I gain a little
time, I shall not want contrivance.

One minute gives invention to destroy,

What to rebuild will a whole age employ.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

LADY FROTH _and_ CYNTHIA.

CYNT. Indeed, madam! Is it possible your ladyship could have been so
much in love?

LADY FROTH. I could not sleep; I did not sleep one wink for three weeks
together.

CYNT. Prodigious! I wonder want of sleep, and so much love and so much
wit as your ladyship has, did not turn your brain.

LADY FROTH. Oh, my dear Cynthia, you must not rally your friend. But
really, as you say, I wonder too. But then I had a way. For, between
you and I, I had whimsies and vapours, but I gave them vent.

CYNT. How, pray, madam?

LADY FROTH. Oh, I writ, writ abundantly. Do you never write?

CYNT. Write what?

LADY FROTH. Songs, elegies, satires, encomiums, panegyrics, lampoons,
plays, or heroic poems?

CYNT. O Lord, not I, madam; I'm content to be a courteous reader.

LADY FROTH. Oh, inconsistent! In love and not write! If my lord and I
had been both of your temper, we had never come together. Oh, bless me!
What a sad thing would that have been, if my lord and I should never have
met!

CYNT. Then neither my lord nor you would ever have met with your match,
on my conscience.

LADY FROTH. O' my conscience, no more we should; thou say'st right. For
sure my Lord Froth is as fine a gentleman and as much a man of quality!
Ah! nothing at all of the common air. I think I may say he