Oh! Humphry, you are come in a seasonable minute. I want to talk to thee, and to tell thee that my head and heart are on the rack about my son.
Humph. Sir, you may trust his discretion; I am sure you may.
Sir J. Bev. Why, I do believe I may, and yet I'm in a thousand fears when I lay this vast wealth before me; when I consider his prepossessions, either generous to a folly, in an honourable love, or abandoned, past redemption, in a vicious one; and, from the one or the other, his insensibility to the fairest prospect towards doubling our estate: a father, who knows how useful wealth is, and how necessary, even to those who despise it—I say a father, Humphry, a father cannot bear it.
Humph. Be not transported, sir; you will grow incapable of taking any resolution in your perplexity.
Sir J. Bev. Yet, as angry as I am with him, I would not have him surprised in anything. This mercantile rough man may go grossly into the examination of this matter, and talk to the gentlewoman so as to——
Humph. No, I hope, not in an abrupt manner.
Sir J. Bev. No, I hope not! Why, dost thou know anything of her, or of him, or of anything of it, or all of it?
Humph. My dear master, I know so much that I told him this very day you had reason to be secretly out of humour about her.
Sir J. Bev. Did you go so far? Well, what said he to that?
Humph. His words were, looking upon me steadfastly: "Humphry," says he, "that woman is a woman of honour."