Part 49 (1/2)

CLIN. (_listening_). Death!

SYRUS. Gold, clothes!

It grows late too, and they may miss their way.

We've been to blame: Dromo, run back, and meet them.

Away! quick! don't loiter.

(_Exit DROMO._

CLIN. What a wretch!

All my fair hopes quite blasted!

c.l.i.t. What's the matter?

What is it troubles you?

CLIN. What troubles me?

D'ye hear? She waiting-women, gold, and clothes!

She, whom I left with one poor servant-girl!

Whence come they, think you?

c.l.i.t. Oh, I take you now.

SYRUS (_to himself_). G.o.ds, what a crowd! our house will hardly hold them.

What eating, and what drinking will there be!

How miserable our old gentleman!

But here are those I wish'd to see!

(_Seeing c.l.i.t. 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 circ.u.mstance 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.

c.l.i.t. Other! who? what other?

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

c.l.i.t. Dispatch then.