SCENE.—A Garden.
MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON.
SELBY
I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton,
Not to conjecture, that some passages
In your unfinished story, rightly interpreted,
Glanced at my bosom's peace;
You knew my wife?
MRS. FRAMPTON
Even from her earliest school-days.—What of that?
Or how is she concerned in my fine riddles,
Framed for the hour's amusement?
SELBY
By my hopes
Of my new interest conceived in you,
And by the honest passion of my heart,
Which not obliquely I to you did hint;
Come from the clouds of misty allegory,
And in plain language let me hear the worst.
Stand I disgraced or no?
MRS. FRAMPTON
Then, by my hopes
Of my new interest conceiv'd in you,
And by the kindling passion in my breast,
Which through my riddles you had almost read,
Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all.
In her school years, then bordering on fifteen,
Or haply not much past, she loved a youth—
SELBY
My most ingenuous Widow—
MRS. FRAMPTON
Met him oft
By stealth, where I still of the party was—
SELBY
Prime confidant to all the school, I warrant,
And general go-between—
[Aside.]
MRS. FRAMPTON
One morn he came
In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail,
Or in few hours would be, that must convey
Him and his destinies to barbarous shores,
Where, should he perish by inglorious hands,
It would be consolation in his death
To have call'd his Katherine his."