I'll have you to know I keep company with the politest people in town, and the assemblies I frequent are full of such.
"Lord T.So are the churches--now and then.
"Lady T.My friends frequent them, too, as well as the assemblies.
"Lord T.Yes; and would do it oftener if a groom of the chambers there were allowed to furnish cards to the company.
"Lady T.I see what you drive at all this while.

You would lay an imputation on my fame to cover your own avarice! I might take any pleasures, I find, that were not expensive.
"Lord T.Have a care, madam; don't let me think you only value your chastity to make me reproachable for not indulging you in everything else that's vicious.

I, madam, have a reputation, too, to guard that's dear to me as yours.

The follies of an ungoverned wife may make the wisest man uneasy; but 'tis his own fault if ever they make him contemptible.
"Lady T.My lord, you make a woman mad! "Lord T.You'd make a man a fool.
"Lady T.If heaven has made you otherwise, that won't be in my power.
"Lord T.Whatever may be in your inclination, madam, I'll prevent you making me a beggar, at least.
"Lady T.A beggar! Croesus, I'm out of patience.

I won't come home till four to-morrow morning.
"Lord T.That may be, madam; but I'll order the doors to be locked at twelve.
"Lady T.Then I won't come home till to-morrow night.
"Lord T.Then, madam, you shall never come home again." [_Exit_ Lord Townley.
* * * * * In the end, of course, Lady Townley is converted to the pleasures of domesticity, and ends the comedy by saying: "So visible the bliss, so plain the way, How was it possible my sense could stray?
But now, a convert to this truth I come, That married happiness is never found from home." Perhaps when Oldfield delivered these virtuous lines, she thought to herself that happiness, even of the unmarried kind, was never very far away from home.