urth week for this final change. This would be about a
month altogether. And this month, Mellefont, I will overlook with the
greatest pleasure; but you will allow that I must not lose sight of
you.

MELLEFONT.

You try all the weapons in vain which you remember to have used
successfully with me in bygone days. A virtuous resolution secures me
against both your tenderness and your wit. However, I will not expose
myself longer to either. I go, and have nothing more to tell you but
that in a few days you shall know that I am bound in such a manner as
will utterly destroy all your hope of my ever returning into your
sinful slavery. You will have learned my justification sufficiently
from the letter which I sent to you before my departure.

MARWOOD.

It is well that you mention this letter. Tell me, who did you get to
write it?

MELLEFONT.

Did not I write it myself?

MARWOOD.

Impossible! The beginning of it, in which you reckoned up--I do not
know what sums--which you say you have wasted with me, must have been
written by an innkeeper, and the theological part at the end by a
Quaker. I will now give you a serious reply to it. As to the principal
point, you well know that all the presents which you have made are
still in existence. I have never considered your cheques or your jewels
as my property, and I have brought them all with me to return them into
the hands which entrusted them to me.

MELLEFONT.

Keep them all, Marwood!

MARWOOD.

I will not keep any of them. What right have I to them without you
yourself? Although you do not love me any more, you must at least do me
justice and not take me for one of those venal females, to whom it is a
matter of indifference by whose booty they enrich themselves. Come,
Mellefont, you shall this moment be as rich again as you perhaps might
still be if you had not known me; and perhaps, too, might _not_ be.

MELLEFONT.

What demon intent upon my destruction speaks through you now!
Voluptuous Marwood does not think so nobly.

MARWOOD.

Do you call that noble? I call it only just. No, Sir, no, I do not ask
that you shall account the return of your gifts as anything remarkable.
It costs me nothing, and I should even co