iserable our old gentleman!
But here are those I wish'd to see!
(_Seeing CLIT. and CLIN._)

CLIN. Oh Jove!
Where then are truth, and faith, and honor fled?
While I a fugitive, for love of you,
Quit my dear country, you, Antiphila,
For sordid gain desert me in distress!
You, for whose sake I courted infamy,
And cast off my obedience to my father.
He, I remember now with grief and shame,
Oft warn'd me of these women's ways; oft tried
In vain by sage advice to wean me from her.
But now I bid farewell to her forever;
Though, when 'twere good and wholesome, I was froward.
No wretch more curs'd than I!

SYRUS. He has misconstrued
All our discourse, I find--You fancy, Clinia,
Your mistress other than she is. Her life,
As far as we from circumstance could learn,
Her disposition tow'rd you, are the same.

CLIN. How! tell me all: for there is naught on earth
I'd rather know than that my fears are false.

SYRUS. First then, that you may be appris'd of all,
Th' old woman, thought her mother, was not so:
That beldam also is deceas'd; for this
I overheard her, as we came along,
Telling the other.

CLIT. Other! who? what other?

SYRUS. Let me but finish what I have begun,
And I shall come to that.

CLIT. Dispatch then.

SYRUS. First,
Having arriv'd, Dromo knocks at the door:
Which an old woman had no sooner open'd,
But in goes Dromo, and I after him.
Th' old woman bolts the door, and spins again,
And now, or never, Clinia, might be known,
Coming thus unexpectedly upon her,
Antiphila's employments in your absence:
For such, as then we saw, we might presume
Her daily practice, which of all things else,
Betrays the mind and disposition most.
Busily plying of the web we found her,
Decently clad in mourning,--I suppose,
For the deceas'd old woman.--She had on
No gold or trinkets, but was plain and neat,
And dress'd like those who dress but for themselves.
No female varnish to set off her beauty:
Her hair dishevel'd, long, and flowing loose
About her shoulders.--Peace! (_To CLINIA._)

CLIN. Nay, prithee, Syrus,
Do not transport me thus without a cause.

SYRUS. Th' old woman spun the woof; one servant-girl,
A tatter'd dirty dowdy, weaving by her.

CLIT. Clinia, if this be true, as sure it is,
Who is more fortunate than you? D'ye mark
The ragged dirty girl that he describ'd?
A sign the mistress leads a blameless life,
When she maintains no flaunting go-between:
For 'tis a rule with those gallants, who wish