rudence, nice minds will be suspicious of its birth.

JULIA
I know not whither your insinuations would tend:--but as they seem
pressing to insult me, I will spare you the regret of having done
so.--I have given you no cause for this! [Exit in tears.]

FAULKLAND
In tears! Stay, Julia: stay but for a moment.--The door is
fastened!--Julia!--my soul--but for one moment!--I hear her
sobbing!--'Sdeath! what a brute am I to use her thus! Yet
stay!--Ay--she is coming now:--how little resolution there is in a
woman!--how a few soft words can turn them!--No, faith!--she is not
coming either.--Why, Julia--my love--say but that you forgive me--come
but to tell me that--now this is being too resentful. Stay! she is
coming too--I thought she would--no steadiness in anything: her going
away must have been a mere trick then--she shan't see that I was hurt
by it.--I'll affect indifference--[Hums a tune; then listens.]
No--zounds! she's not coming!--nor don't intend it, I suppose.--This is
not steadiness, but obstinacy! Yet I deserve it.--What, after so long
an absence to quarrel with her tenderness!--'twas barbarous and
unmanly!--I should be ashamed to see her now.--I'll wait till her just
resentment is abated--and when I distress her so again, may I lose her
for ever! and be linked instead to some antique virago, whose gnawing
passions, and long hoarded spleen, shall make me curse my folly half
the day and all the night. [Exit.]

* * * * * * *

Scene III--Mrs. MALAPROP's Lodgings.
[Mrs. MALAPROP, with a letter in her hand, and CAPTAIN ABSOLUTE.]

Mrs. MALAPROP
Your being Sir Anthony's son, captain, would itself be a sufficient
accommodation; but from the ingenuity of your appearance, I am
convinced you deserve the character here given of you.

ABSOLUTE
Permit me to say, madam, that as I never yet have had the pleasure of
seeing Miss Languish, my principal inducement in this affair at present
is the honour of being allied to Mrs. Malaprop; of whose intellectual
accomplishments, elegant manners, and unaffected learning, no tongue is
silent.

Mrs. MALAPROP
Sir, you do me infinite honour! I beg, captain, you'll be
seated.--[They sit.] Ah! few gentlemen, now-a-days, know how to value
the ineffectual qualities in a woman! few think how a little knowledge
becomes a gentlewoman!--Men have no sense now but for the worthless
flower of beauty!

ABSOLUTE
It is but too true, indeed, ma'am;--yet I fear our ladies should share
the b