MRS. MARWOOD _alone_.
MRS. MAR. Indeed, Mrs. Engine, is it thus with you? Are you become a
go-between of this importance? Yes, I shall watch you. Why this wench
is the _passe-partout_, a very master-key to everybody’s strong box. My
friend Fainall, have you carried it so swimmingly? I thought there was
something in it; but it seems it’s over with you. Your loathing is not
from a want of appetite then, but from a surfeit. Else you could never
be so cool to fall from a principal to be an assistant, to procure for
him! A pattern of generosity, that I confess. Well, Mr. Fainall, you
have met with your match.—O man, man! Woman, woman! The devil’s an ass:
if I were a painter, I would draw him like an idiot, a driveller with a
bib and bells. Man should have his head and horns, and woman the rest of
him. Poor, simple fiend! ‘Madam Marwood has a month’s mind, but he
can’t abide her.’ ’Twere better for him you had not been his confessor
in that affair, without you could have kept his counsel closer. I shall
not prove another pattern of generosity; he has not obliged me to that
with those excesses of himself, and now I’ll have none of him. Here
comes the good lady, panting ripe, with a heart full of hope, and a head
full of care, like any chymist upon the day of projection.