KATHERINE
      No more of that, for mercy,
      If you’d not have me, sinking at your feet,
      Cleave the cold earth for comfort. [Kneels.]

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      This to me? 
      This posture to your friend had better suited
      The orphan Katherine in her humble school-days
      To the then rich heiress, than the wife of Selby,
      Of wealthy Mr. Selby,
      To the poor widow Frampton, sunk as she is. 
      Come, come,
      ’Twas something, or ’twas nothing, that I said;
      I did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow! 
      You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. 
      I’ll make him give you up a night or so;
      In faith I will:  that we may lie, and talk
      Old tricks of school-days over.

      KATHERINE
      Hear me, madam—­

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      Not by that name.  Your friend—­

      KATHERINE
      My truest friend,
      And saviour of my honour!

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      This sounds better;
      You still shall find me such.

      KATHERINE
      That you have graced
      Our poor house with your presence hitherto,
      Has been my greatest comfort, the sole solace
      Of my forlorn and hardly guess’d estate. 
      You have been pleased
      To accept some trivial hospitalities,
      In part of payment of a long arrear
      I owe to you, no less than for my life.

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      You speak my services too large.

      KATHERINE
      Nay, less;
      For what an abject thing were life to me
      Without your silence on my dreadful secret! 
      And I would wish the league we have renew’d
      Might be perpetual—­

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      Have a care, fine madam! [Aside.]

      KATHERINE
      That one house still might hold us.  But my husband
      Has shown himself of late—­

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      How Mistress Selby?

      KATHERINE
      Not, not impatient.  You misconstrue him. 
      He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love
      The friend of his wife’s youth.  But there are moods
      In which—­

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      I understand you;—­in which husbands,
      And wives that love, may wish to be alone,
      To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance,
      After a five years’ wedlock.

      KATHERINE
      Was that well
      Or charitably put? do these pale cheeks
      Proclaim a wanton blood? this wasting form
      Seem a fit theatre for Levity
      To play his love-tricks on; and act such follies,
      As even in Affection’s first bland Moon
      Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks? 
      I was about to say, that there are times,
      When the most frank and sociable man
      May surfeit on most loved society,
      Preferring loneness rather—­