then, I see I have been deceived by every one! But I don't
care--I'll never have him.

JULIA
Nay, Lydia----

LYDIA
Why, is it not provoking? when I thought we were coming to the
prettiest distress imaginable, to find myself made a mere Smithfield
bargain of at last! There, had I projected one of the most sentimental
elopements!--so becoming a disguise!--so amiable a ladder of
ropes!--Conscious moon--four horses--Scotch parson--with such surprise
to Mrs. Malaprop--and such paragraphs in the newspapers!--Oh, I shall
die with disappointment!

JULIA
I don't wonder at it!

LYDIA
Now--sad reverse!--what have I to expect, but, after a deal of flimsy
preparation with a bishop's license, and my aunt's blessing, to go
simpering up to the altar; or perhaps be cried three times in a country
church, and have an unmannerly fat clerk ask the consent of every
butcher in the parish to join John Absolute and Lydia Languish,
spinster! Oh that I should live to hear myself called spinster!

JULIA
Melancholy indeed!

LYDIA
How mortifying, to remember the dear delicious shifts I used to be put
to, to gain half a minute's conversation with this fellow! How often
have I stole forth, in the coldest night in January, and found him in
the garden, stuck like a dripping statue! There would he kneel to me in
the snow, and sneeze and cough so pathetically! he shivering with cold
and I with apprehension! and while the freezing blast numbed our
joints, how warmly would he press me to pity his flame, and glow with
mutual ardour!--Ah, Julia, that was something like being in love.

JULIA
If I were in spirits, Lydia, I should chide you only by laughing
heartily at you; but it suits more the situation of my mind, at
present, earnestly to entreat you not to let a man, who loves you with
sincerity, suffer that unhappiness from your caprice, which I know too
well caprice can inflict.

LYDIA
O Lud! what has brought my aunt here?

[Enter Mrs. MALAPROP, FAG, and DAVID.]

Mrs. MALAPROP
So! so! here's fine work!--here's fine suicide, parricide, and
simulation, going on in the fields! and Sir Anthony not to be found to
prevent the antistrophe!

JULIA
For Heaven's sake, madam, what's the meaning of this?

Mrs. MALAPROP
That gentleman can tell you--'twas he enveloped the affair to me.

LYDIA
[To FAG.] Do, sir, will you, inform us?

FAG
Ma'am, I should hold myself very deficient in every requisite that
forms the man of breeding, if I delaye