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148 WILLIAM CONGREVE [ACT III
entirely at your mercy: nay, she must ever after be in awe
of you.
Mel. Let me adore thee, my better genius! by Heaven I
think it is not in the power of fate to disappoint my hopes!
—My hopes! my certainty!
Mask. Well, I'll meet you here within a quarter of eight,
and give you notice.
Mel. Good fortune ever go along with thee! [Exeunt.
SCENE II
The Same
MELLEFONT and CARELESS meeting.
Care. Mellcfont, get out o' th' way, my Lady Plyant's
coming, and I shall never succeed while thou art in sight,
—though she begins to tack about; but I made love a great
while to no purpose.
Mel. Why, what's the matter? she's convinced that I
don't care for her.
Care. I can't get an answer from her that does not begin
with her honour, or her virtue, her religion, or some such
cant. Then she has told me the whole history of Sir Paul's
nine years' courtship; how he has lain for whole nights
together upon the stairs before her chamber door; and that
the first favour he received from her was a piece of an old
scarlet petticoat for a stomacher, which since the day of his
marriage he has, out of a piece of gallantry, converted into
a nightcap, and wears it still with much solemnity on his
anniversary wedding-night.
Mel. That I have seen, with the ceremony thereunto
belonging: for on that night he creeps in at the bed's feet,
like a gulled bassa 1 that has married a relation of the Grand
Signior, and that night he has his arms at liberty. Did not
she tell you at what a distance she keeps him? He has confessed
to me that but at some certain times, that is, I suppose,
when she apprehends being with child, he never has
the privilege of using the familiarity of a husband with a
wife. He was once given to scrambling with his hands and
sprawling in his sleep; and ever since she has him swaddled
up in blankets, and his hands and feet swathed down, and
1 Pasha.