SGAN. Where is your Léonor, pray?
AR. Why this question? She is, as I think, at a friend's house at a ball.
SGAN. Eh! Oh yes! Follow me; you shall see to what ball Missy is gone.
AR. What do you mean?
SGAN. You have brought her up very well indeed. It is not good to be always finding fault; the mind is captivated by much tenderness; and suspicious precautions, bolts, and bars, make neither wives nor maids virtuous; we cause them to do evil by so much austerity; their sex demands a little freedom. Of a verity she has taken her fill of it, the artful girl; and with her, virtue has grown very complaisant.
AR. What is the drift of such a speech?
SGAN. Bravo, my elder brother! it is what you richly deserve; I would not for twenty pistoles that you should have missed this fruit of your silly maxims. Look what our lessons have produced in these two sisters: the one avoids the gallants, the other runs after them.
AR. If you will not make your riddle clearer…
SGAN. The riddle is that her ball is at Valère's; that I saw her go to him under cover of night, and that she is at this moment in his arms.
AR. Who?