115 Leon. No; and swears she never will: that’s her torment.
Claud. ’Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: ‘Shall I,’ says she, ‘that have so oft encountered him with scorn, 120 write to him that I love him?’
Leon. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she’ll be up twenty times a night; and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of [124] paper: my daughter tells us all.
125 Claud. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember [126] a pretty jest your daughter told us of.
[127] Leon. O, when she had writ it, and was reading it [128] over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?
Claud. That.
130 Leon. O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; railed at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her; ‘I measure him,’ [133] says she, ‘by my own spirit; for I should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love him, I should.’
135 Claud. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, [136] sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; ‘O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!’
Leon. She doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the ecstasy hath so much overborne her, that my daughter is [140] sometime afeard she will do a desperate outrage to herself: it is very true.
D. Pedro. It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it.