SELBY
      Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. 
      “A crafty page, that for advantage watch’d,
      Detected in the act a brother page,
      Of his own years, that was his bosom friend;
      And thenceforth he became that other’s lord,
      And like a tyrant he demean’d himself,
      Laid forced exactions on his fellow’s purse;
      And when that poor means fail’d, held o’er his head
      Threats of impending death in hideous forms;
      Till the small culprit on his nightly couch
      Dream’d of strange pains, and felt his body writhe
      In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake.”

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      I like not this beginning—­

      SELBY
      Pray you, attend. 
      “The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps,
      And took the youthful pleasures from his days,
      And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow,
      That from a rose-cheek’d boy he waned and waned
      To a pale skeleton of what he was;
      And would have died, but for one lucky chance.”

      KATHERINE
      Oh!

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      Your wife—­she faints—­some cordial—­smell to this.

      SELBY
      Stand off.  My sister best will do that office.

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      Are all his tempting speeches come to this?
      [Aside.]

      SELBY
      What ail’d my wife?

      KATHERINE
      A warning faintness, sir,
      Seized on my spirits, when you came to where
      You said “a lucky chance.”  I am better now,
      Please you go on.

      SELBY
      The sequel shall be brief.

      KATHERINE
      But brief or long, I feel my fate hangs on it.
      [Aside.]

      SELBY
      “One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid,
      Close by an arbour where the two boys talk’d
      (As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns
      Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth,
      Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,)
      O’erheard their dialogue; and heard enough
      To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. 
      The following day a Cadi was dispatched
      To summon both before the judgment-seat: 
      The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear,
      And the informing friend, who readily,
      Fired with fair promises of large reward,
      And Caliph’s love, the hateful truth disclosed.”

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      What did the Caliph to the offending boy,
      That had so grossly err’d?

      SELBY
      His sceptred hand
      He forth in token of forgiveness stretch’d,
      And clapp’d his cheeks, and courted him with gifts,
      And he became once more his favourite page.

      MRS. FRAMPTON
      But for that other—­