Scene III.

The Way of the World

by William Congreve

MIRABELL, FAINALL, BETTY.

FAINALL
Joy of your success, Mirabell; you look pleased.

MIRABELL
Ay; I have been engaged in a matter of some sort of
mirth, which is not yet ripe for discovery. I am glad this is not a
cabal- night. I wonder, Fainall, that you who are married, and of
consequence should be discreet, will suffer your wife to be of such a
party.

FAINALL
Faith, I am not jealous. Besides, most who are
engaged are women and relations; and for the men, they are of a kind
too contemptible to give scandal.

MIRABELL
I am of another opinion: the greater the coxcomb,
always the more the scandal; for a woman who is not a fool can have
but one reason for associating with a man who is one.

FAINALL
Are you jealous as often as you see Witwoud
entertained by Millamant?

MIRABELL
Of her understanding I am, if not of her person.

FAINALL
You do her wrong; for, to give her her due, she has
wit.

MIRABELL
She has beauty enough to make any man think so, and
complaisance enough not to contradict him who shall tell her so.

FAINALL
For a passionate lover methinks you are a man
somewhat too discerning in the failings of your mistress.

MIRABELL
And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a
lover, for I like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her
faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become
her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious
serve but to make her more agreeable. I'll tell thee, Fainall, she
once used me with that insolence that in revenge I took her to
pieces, sifted her, and separated her failings: I studied 'em and
got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large that I was not without
hopes, one day or other, to hate her heartily. To which end I so
used myself to think of 'em, that at length, contrary to my design
and expectation, they gave me every hour less and less disturbance,
till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember 'em without
being displeased. They are now grown as familiar to me as my own
frailties, and in all probability in a little time longer I shall
like 'em as well.

FAINALL
Marry her, marry her; be half as well acquainted
with her charms as you are with her defects, and, my life on't, you
are your own man again.

MIRABELL
Say you so?

FAINALL
Ay, ay; I have experience. I have a wife, and so
forth.