Start: Lucy: Well—madam, now have I dres...

Start: Lucy: Well—madam, now have I dressed you, and set you out with so many ornaments, and spent upon you ounces of essence and pulvillio; and all this for no other purpose but as people adorn and perfume a corpse for a stinking second-hand grave: such, or as bad, I think Master Sparkish's bed.

Alithea: Hold your peace.

Lucy: Nay, madam, I will ask you the reason why you would banish poor Master Harcourt for ever from your sight; how could you be so hard-hearted?

Alithea: 'Twas because I was not hard-hearted.

Lucy: No, no; 'twas stark love and kindness, I warrant.

Alithea: It was so; I would see him no more because I love him.

Lucy: Hey day, a very pretty reason!

Alithea: You do not understand me.

Lucy: I wish you may yourself.

Alithea: I was engaged to marry, you see, another man, whom my justice will not suffer me to deceive or injure.

Lucy: Can there be a greater cheat or wrong done to a man than to give him your person without your heart? I should make a conscience of it.

Alithea: I'll retrieve it for him after I am married a while.

Lucy: The woman that marries to love better, will be as much mistaken as the wencher that marries to live better. No, madam, marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas! you only lose what little stock you had before.

Alithea: I find by your rhetoric you have been bribed to betray me.

Lucy: Only by his merit, that has bribed your heart, you see, against your word and rigid honour. But what a devil is this honour! 'tis sure a disease in the head, like the megrim or falling-sickness, that always hurries people away to do themselves mischief. Men lose their lives by it; women, what's dearer to 'em, their love, the life of life.

Alithea: Come, pray talk you no more of honour, nor Master Harcourt; I wish the other would come to secure my fidelity to him and his right in me.

Lucy: You will marry him then?

Alithea: Certainly, I have given him already my word, and will my hand too, to make it good, when he comes.

Lucy: Well, I wish I may never stick pin more, if he be not an arrant natural, to t'other fine gentleman.

Alithea: I own he wants the wit of Harcourt, which I will dispense withal for another want he has, which is want of jealousy, which men of wit seldom want.

Lucy: Lord, madam, what should you do with a fool to your husband? You intend to be honest, don't you? then that husbandly virtue, credulity, is thrown away upon you.

Alithea: He only that could suspect my virtue should have cause to do it; 'tis Sparkish's confidence in my truth that obliges me to be so faithful to him.

Lucy: You are not sure his opinion may last.

Alithea: I am satisfied, 'tis impossible for him to be jealous after the proofs I have had of him. Jealousy in a husband—Heaven defend me from it! it begets a thousand plagues to a poor woman, the loss of her honour, her quiet, and her—

Lucy: And her pleasure.

Alithea: What d'ye mean, impertinent?

Lucy: Liberty is a great pleasure, madam.

Alithea: I say, loss of her honour, her quiet, nay, her life sometimes; and what's as bad almost, the loss of this town; that is, she is sent into the country, which is the last ill-usage of a husband to a wife, I think.

Lucy: [Aside.] O, does the wind lie there?—[Aloud.] Then of necessity, madam, you think a man must carry his wife into the country, if he be wise. The country is as terrible, I find, to our young English ladies, as a monastery to those abroad; and on my virginity, I think they would rather marry a London jailer, than a high sheriff of a county, since neither can stir from his employment. Formerly women of wit married fools for a great estate, a fine seat, or the like; but now 'tis for a pretty seat only in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, St. James's-Fields, or the Pall-Mall.

Wycherly, William, The Country Wife, Project Gutenberg, 2017, pp. 307-309.

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