'twas well I left the private passage
open.

LADY TOUCH. So, that's safe.

MASK. And so may all your pleasures be, and secret as this kiss--

MEL. And may all treachery be thus discovered. [_Leaps out_.]

LADY TOUCH. Ah! [_Shrieks_.]

MEL. Villain! [_Offers to draw_.]

MASK. Nay, then, there's but one way. [_Runs out_.]

SCENE XVIII.

LADY TOUCHWOOD, MELLEFONT.

MEL. Say you so, were you provided for an escape? Hold, madam, you have
no more holes to your burrow; I'll stand between you and this sally-port.

LADY TOUCH. Thunder strike thee dead for this deceit, immediate
lightning blast thee, me, and the whole world! Oh! I could rack myself,
play the vulture to my own heart, and gnaw it piecemeal, for not boding
to me this misfortune.

MEL. Be patient.

LADY TOUCH. Be damned.

MEL. Consider, I have you on the hook; you will but flounder yourself a-
weary, and be nevertheless my prisoner.

LADY TOUCH. I'll hold my breath and die, but I'll be free.

MEL. O madam, have a care of dying unprepared, I doubt you have some
unrepented sins that may hang heavy, and retard your flight.

LADY TOUCH. O! what shall I do? say? Whither shall I turn? Has hell no
remedy?

MEL. None; hell has served you even as heaven has done, left you to
yourself.--You're in a kind of Erasmus paradise, yet if you please you
may make it a purgatory; and with a little penance and my absolution all
this may turn to good account.

LADY TOUCH. [_Aside_.] Hold in my passion, and fall, fall a little,
thou swelling heart; let me have some intermission of this rage, and one
minute's coolness to dissemble. [_She weeps_.]

MEL. You have been to blame. I like those tears, and hope they are of
the purest kind,--penitential tears.

LADY TOUCH. O the scene was shifted quick before me,--I had not time to
think. I was surprised to see a monster in the glass, and now I find
'tis myself; can you have mercy to forgive the faults I have imagined,
but never put in practice?--O consider, consider how fatal you have been
to me, you have already killed the quiet of this life. The love of you
was the first wandering fire that e'er misled my steps, and while I had
only that in view, I was betrayed into unthought of ways of ruin.

MEL. May I believe this true?

LADY TOUCH. O be not cruelly incredulous.--How can you doubt these
streaming eyes? Keep the severest eye o'er all my future conduct, and if
I once relapse,