LADY PLYANT. Why, gads my life, cousin Mellefont, you cannot be so
peremptory as to deny it, when I tax you with it to your face? for now
Sir Paul's gone, you are _corum nobus_.

MEL. By heav'n, I love her more than life or--

LADY PLYANT. Fiddle faddle, don't tell me of this and that, and
everything in the world, but give me mathemacular demonstration; answer
me directly. But I have not patience. Oh, the impiety of it, as I was
saying, and the unparalleled wickedness! O merciful Father! How could
you think to reverse nature so, to make the daughter the means of
procuring the mother?

MEL. The daughter to procure the mother!

LADY PLYANT. Ay, for though I am not Cynthia's own mother, I am her
father's wife, and that's near enough to make it incest.

MEL. Incest! O my precious aunt, and the devil in conjunction.
[_Aside_.]

LADY PLYANT. Oh, reflect upon the horror of that, and then the guilt of
deceiving everybody; marrying the daughter, only to make a cuckold of the
father; and then seducing me, debauching my purity, and perverting me
from the road of virtue in which I have trod thus long, and never made
one trip, not one _faux pas_. Oh, consider it! What would you have to
answer for if you should provoke me to frailty? Alas! humanity is
feeble, heav'n knows! very feeble, and unable to support itself.

MEL. Where am I? is it day? and am I awake? Madam--

LADY PLYANT. And nobody knows how circumstances may happen together. To
my thinking, now I could resist the strongest temptation. But yet I
know, 'tis impossible for me to know whether I could or not; there's no
certainty in the things of this life.

MEL. Madam, pray give me leave to ask you one question.

LADY PLYANT. O Lord, ask me the question; I'll swear I'll refuse it, I
swear I'll deny it--therefore don't ask me; nay, you shan't ask me, I
swear I'll deny it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my
face; I warrant I am as red as a turkey-cock. O fie, cousin Mellefont!

MEL. Nay, madam, hear me; I mean--

LADY PLYANT. Hear you? No, no; I'll deny you first and hear you
afterwards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon
hearing. Hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible.
I won't trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is infallible and
uncomeatable.

MEL. For heav'n's sake, madam--

LADY PLYANT. Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of heav'n,
and have so much wicked