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80 WILLIAM CONGREVE [ACT iv
SCENE II
The Street
Enter VAINLDVE and SHARPER.
Sharp. How, Araminta lost!
Vain. To confirm what I have said, read this—
[ Gives a letter.
Sharp. Hum, hum.—\Reads] "And what then appeared
a fault, upon reflection seems only an effect of a too powerful
passion. I'm afraid I give too great a proof of my own
at this time.—I am in disorder for what I have written.
But something, I know not what, forced me. I only beg a
favourable censure 9 of this and your—ARAMINTA."
Sharp. Lost' Pray Heaven thou hast not lost thy wits!
Here, here, she's thy own, man, signed and sealed too.
To her, man!—a delicious melon, pure and consenting
ripe, and only waits thy cutting up!—She has been breeding
love to thee all this while, and just now she's delivered of it.
Vain. 'Tis an untimely fruit, and she has miscarried of
her love.
Sharp. Never leave this damned, ill-natured whimsy,
Frank? Thou hast a sickly, peevish appetite; only chew
love, and cannot digest it.
Vain. Yes, when I feed myself—but I hate to be crammed.
—Bv Heaven, there's not a woman will give a man the
pleasure of a chase! my sport is always balked, or cut short!
I stumble over the game I would pursue. Tis dull and unnatural
to have a hare run full in the hound's mouth, and
would distaste the keenest hunter: I would have overtaken,
not have met, my game.
Sharp. However, I hope you don't mean to forsake it;
that will be but a kind of mongrel cur's trick.—Well, are
you for the Mall?
Vain. No, she will be there this 'evening.—Yes, I will go
too—and she shall see her error in—
Sharp. In her choice, e^ad!—But thou canst not be so
great a brute as to slicht her?
Vain. I should disappoint her if I did not. By her management
I should think she expects it.
9 Opinion.