The Way of the World: Scene VII.
Scene VII.
MRS. MARWOOD alone.
MRS. MARWOOD
Indeed, Mrs. Engine, is it thus with you? Are you become
a go-between of this importance? Yes, I shall watch you. Why this
wench is the PASSE-PARTOUT, a very master-key to everybody's strong
box. My friend Fainall, have you carried it so swimmingly? I
thought there was something in it; but it seems it's over with you.
Your loathing is not from a want of appetite then, but from a
surfeit. Else you could never be so cool to fall from a principal
to be an assistant, to procure for him! A pattern of generosity,
that I confess. Well, Mr. Fainall, you have met with your match.--O
man, man! Woman, woman! The devil's an ass: if I were a painter,
I would draw him like an idiot, a driveller with a bib and bells.
Man should have his head and horns, and woman the rest of him.
Poor, simple fiend! 'Madam Marwood has a month's mind, but he can't
abide her.' 'Twere better for him you had not been his confessor in
that affair, without you could have kept his counsel closer. I
shall not prove another pattern of generosity; he has not obliged me
to that with those excesses of himself, and now I'll have none of
him. Here comes the good lady, panting ripe, with a heart full of
hope, and a head full of care, like any chymist upon the day of
projection.