VAL. What has that surly brute just given you?
ERG. This letter, sir, as well as this box, which he pretends that
Isabella has received from you, and about which, he says, she is in a
great rage. She returns it to you unopened. Read it quickly, and let us
see if I am mistaken.
VAL. (_Reads_). "_This letter will no doubt surprise you; both
the resolution to write to you and the means of conveying it to your
hands may be thought very bold in me; but I am in such a condition, that
I can no longer restrain myself. Well-founded repugnance to a marriage
with which I am threatened in six days, makes me risk everything; and in
the determination to free myself from it by whatever means, I thought I
had rather choose you than despair. Yet do not think that you owe all to
my evil fate; it is not the constraint in which I find myself that has
given rise to the sentiments I entertain for you; but it hastens the
avowal of them, and makes me transgress the decorum which the
proprieties of my sex require. It depends on you alone to make me
shortly your own; I wait only until you have declared your intentions to
me before acquainting you with the resolution I have taken; but, above
all remember that time presses, and that two hearts, which love each
other, ought to understand even the slightest hint._"
ERG. Well, sir, is not this contrivance original? For a young girl she
is not so very ignorant. Would one have thought her capable of these
love stratagems?
VAL. Ah, I consider her altogether adorable. This evidence of her wit
and tenderness doubles my love for her, and strengthens the feelings
with which her beauty inspires me....
ERG. Here comes the dupe; think what you will say to him.