Scene IV.

The Way of the World

by William Congreve

MIRABELL and MRS. FAINALL.

MRS. FAINALL
They are here yet.

MIRABELL
They are turning into the other walk.

MRS. FAINALL
While I only hated my husband, I could bear to
see him; but since I have despised him, he's too offensive.

MIRABELL
Oh, you should hate with prudence.

MRS. FAINALL
Yes, for I have loved with indiscretion.

MIRABELL
You should have just so much disgust for your
husband as may be sufficient to make you relish your lover.

MRS. FAINALL
You have been the cause that I have loved
without bounds, and would you set limits to that aversion of which
you have been the occasion? Why did you make me marry this man?

MIRABELL
Why do we daily commit disagreeable and dangerous
actions? To save that idol, reputation. If the familiarities of our
loves had produced that consequence of which you were apprehensive,
where could you have fixed a father's name with credit but on a
husband? I knew Fainall to be a man lavish of his morals, an
interested and professing friend, a false and a designing lover, yet
one whose wit and outward fair behaviour have gained a reputation
with the town, enough to make that woman stand excused who has
suffered herself to be won by his addresses. A better man ought not
to have been sacrificed to the occasion; a worse had not answered to
the purpose. When you are weary of him you know your remedy.

MRS. FAINALL
I ought to stand in some degree of credit with
you, Mirabell.

MIRABELL
In justice to you, I have made you privy to my
whole design, and put it in your power to ruin or advance my
fortune.

MRS. FAINALL
Whom have you instructed to represent your
pretended uncle?

MIRABELL
Waitwell, my servant.

MRS. FAINALL
He is an humble servant to Foible, my mother's
woman, and may win her to your interest.

MIRABELL
Care is taken for that. She is won and worn by
this time. They were married this morning.

MRS. FAINALL
Who?

MIRABELL
Waitwell and Foible. I would not tempt my servant
to betray me by trusting him too far. If your mother, in hopes to
ruin me, should consent to marry my pretended uncle, he might, like
Mosca in the FOX, stand upon terms; so I made him sure beforehand.

MRS. FAINALL
So, if my poor mother is caught in a contract,
you will discover the imposture betimes, and release her by producing
a certificate of her gallant's former marriage.

MIRABELL
Yes, upon condition that she consent to my marriage
with her niece, and surrender the moiety of her fortune in her
possession.

MRS. FAINALL
She talked last night of endeavouring at a
match between Millamant and your uncle.

MIRABELL
That was by Foible's direction and my instruction,
that she might seem to carry it more privately.

MRS. FAINALL
Well, I have an opinion of your success, for I
believe my lady will do anything to get an husband; and when she has
this, which you have provided for her, I suppose she will submit to
anything to get rid of him.

MIRABELL
Yes, I think the good lady would marry anything
that resembled a man, though 'twere no more than what a butler could
pinch out of a napkin.

MRS. FAINALL
Female frailty! We must all come to it, if we
live to be old, and feel the craving of a false appetite when the
true is decayed.

MIRABELL
An old woman's appetite is depraved like that of a
girl. 'Tis the green-sickness of a second childhood, and, like the
faint offer of a latter spring, serves but to usher in the fall, and
withers in an affected bloom.

MRS. FAINALL
Here's your mistress.