“I do not understand you, sir,” said Booth.
“Nay,” cries Trent, “if you will not understand me, I have done. I meant only your service; and I thought I had known you better.”
Booth begged him to explain himself. “If you can,” said he, “shew me any way to improve such circumstances as I have opened to you, you may depend on it I shall readily embrace it, and own my obligations to you.”
“That is spoken like a man,” cries Trent. “Why, what is it more than this? Carry your suspicions in your own bosom. Let Mrs. Booth, in whose virtue I am sure you may be justly confident, go to the public places; there let her treat my lord with common civility only; I am sure he will bite. And thus, without suffering him to gain his purpose, you will gain yours. I know several who have succeeded with him in this manner.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” cries Booth, “that you are acquainted with any such rascals. I do assure you, rather than I would act such a part, I would submit to the hardest sentence that fortune could pronounce against me.”
“Do as you please, sir,” said Trent; “I have only ventured to advise you as a friend. But do you not think your nicety is a little over-scrupulous?”
“You will excuse me, sir,” said Booth; “but I think no man can be too scrupulous in points which concern his honour.”
“I know many men of very nice honour,” answered Trent, “who have gone much farther; and no man, I am sure, had ever a better excuse for it than yourself. You will forgive me, Booth, since what I speak proceeds from my love to you; nay, indeed, by mentioning your affairs to me, which I am heartily sorry for, you have given me a right to speak. You know best what friends you have to depend upon; but, if you have no other pretensions than your merit, I can assure you you would fail, if it was possible you could have ten times more merit than you have. And, if you love your wife, as I am convinced you do, what must be your condition in seeing her want the necessaries of life?”
“I know my condition is very hard,” cries Booth; “but I have one comfort in it, which I will never part with, and that is innocence. As to the mere necessaries of life, however, it is pretty difficult to deprive us of them; this I am sure of, no one can want them long.”
“Upon my word, sir,” cries Trent, “I did not know you had been so great a philosopher. But, believe me, these matters look much less terrible at a distance than when they are actually present. You will then find, I am afraid, that honour hath no more skill in cookery than Shakspear tells us it hath in surgery. D—n me if I don’t wish his lordship loved my wife as well as he doth yours, I promise you I would trust her virtue; and, if he should get the better of it, I should have people of fashion enough to keep me in countenance.”