elf with silence, and rather trust your graces
to the fair conscience of virtue, than to the world's or your own
proclamation?

EPI [SOFTLY]: I should be sorry else.

MOR: What say you lady? good lady, speak out.

EPI: I should be sorry else.

MOR: That sorrow doth fill me with gladness. O Morose, thou art
happy above mankind! pray that thou mayest contain thyself. I
will only put her to it once more, and it shall be with the utmost
touch and test of their sex. But hear me, fair lady; I do also
love to see her whom I shall choose for my heifer, to be the
first and principal in all fashions; precede all the dames at
court by a fortnight; have council of tailors, lineners,
lace-women, embroiderers, and sit with them sometimes twice a day
upon French intelligences; and then come forth varied like
nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her
emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady,
with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but
necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those
skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this
wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that
fanne, the t'other scarf, these gloves? Ha! what say you, lady?

EPI [SOFTLY]: I'll leave it to you, sir.

MOR: How, lady? pray you rise a note.

EPI: I leave it to wisdom and you, sir.

MOR: Admirable creature! I will trouble you no more: I will not
sin against so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print on
those divine lips the seal of being mine.--Cutbeard, I give thee
the lease of thy house free: thank me not but with thy leg
[CUTBEARD SHAKES HIS HEAD.]
--I know what thou wouldst say, she's poor, and her friends
deceased. She has brought a wealthy dowry in her silence, Cutbeard;
and in respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, I shall have her more
loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways, and get me a minister
presently, with a soft low voice, to marry us; and pray him he will
not be impertinent, but brief as he can; away: softly,
[EXIT CUTBEARD.]
--Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining-room, your now
mistress.
[EXIT MUTE, FOLLOWED BY EPI.]
--O my felicity! how I shall be revenged on mine insolent kinsman,
and his plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an
heir, and thrust him out of my blood, like