Plume. Sir, you must charge our want of respect upon our ignorance of your quality—but now you are at liberty, I have discharged you.
Syl. Discharged me!
Bal. Yes, sir, and you must once more go home to your father.
Syl. My father! then I am discovered——Oh, sir! [Kneeling.] I expect no pardon.
Bal. Pardon! no, no, child; your crime shall be your punishment: here, captain, I deliver her over to the conjugal power, for her chastisement. Since she will be a wife, be you a husband, a very husband—When she tells you of her love, upbraid her with her folly; be modishly ungrateful, because she has been unfashionably kind; and use her worse than you would any body else, because you can't use her so well as she deserves.
Plume. And are you, Sylvia, in good earnest?
Syl. Earnest! I have gone too far to make it jest, sir.
Plume. And do you give her to me in good earnest?
Bal. If you please to take her, sir.
Plume. Why then I have saved my legs and arms, and lost my liberty; secure from wounds, I am prepared for the gout; farewell subsistence, and welcome taxes—Sir, my liberty and the hope of being a general, are much dearer to me than your twelve hundred pounds a-year—but to your love, madam, I resign my freedom, and, to your beauty, my ambition—greater in obeying at your feet, than commanding at the head of an army.