Page:The Mysterious Mother - Walpole (1781).djvu/17

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A TRAGEDY.
9
Nor discompos'd, nor firm'd to steadiness.
No sudden flushing, and no falt'ring lip:
Nor, tho' she pities, lifts she to her eyes
Her handkerchief, to palliate her disorder.
There the wound rankles not.—I fix'd on love,
The failure of the sex, and aptest cause
Of each attendant crime—

MARTIN.
We master all their craft. Ay, brother, there
We master all their craft. Touch but that string—

BENEDICT.
Still, brother, do you err. She own'd to me,
That, tho' of nature warm, the passion love
Did ne'er anticipate her choice. The count,
Her husband, so ador'd and so lamented,
Won not her fancy, till the nuptial rites
Had with the sting of pleasure taught her passion.
This, with such modest truth, and that truth heighten'd
By conscious sense, that holds deceit a weakness,
She utter'd, I would pawn my order's credit
On her veracity.

MARTIN.
To worm her secThen whither turn
To worm her secret out?

BENEDICT.
I know not that.
She will be silent, but the scorns a falshood.
And thus while frank on all things, but her secret,
I know, I know it not.

MARTIN.
Deny her absolution.Till she disclose it,
Deny her absolution.

BENEDICT.

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