“Lady T. Sincerely.

“Lord T. Now then recollect your thoughts, and tell me seriously why you married me?

“Lady T. You insist upon truth, you say?

“Lord T. I think I have a right to it.

“Lady T. Why then, my lord, to give you at once a proof of my obedience and sincerity—­I think—­I married—­to take off that restraint that lay upon my pleasures, while I was a single woman.

“Lord T. How, madam, is any woman under less restraint after marriage than before it?

“Lady T. O my lord! my lord! they are quite different creatures!  Wives have infinite liberties in life that would be terrible in an unmarried woman to take.

“Lord T. Name one.

“Lady T. Fifty, if you please.  To begin then, in the morning—­a married women may have men at her toilet, invite them to dinner, appoint them a party in a stage box at the play; engross the conversation there, call ’em by their Christian names; talk louder than the players;—­from thence jaunt into the city—­take a frolicksome supper at an India house—­perhaps, in her gaiete de coeur, toast a pretty fellow—­then clatter again to this end of the town, break with the morning into an assembly, crowd to the hazard table, throw a familiar levant upon some sharp lurching man of quality, and if he demands his money, turn it off with a loud laugh, and cry—­you’ll owe it to him, to vex him! ha! ha!

“Lord T. [Aside].  Prodigious!”

It is related that so magnificently did Oldfield describe the pleasures of a woman of fashion that the audience echoed, with a different meaning, Lord Townley’s comment, and showered her with plaudits.  “Prodigious,” indeed, must have been her acting.

Nance was even more captivating, as the comedy progressed, and nowhere did she shine more brilliantly, it may be supposed, than in the following scene: 

“Lady Townley.  Well! look you, my lord; I can bear it no longer!  Nothing still but about my faults, my faults!  An agreeable subject truly!

“Lord T. Why, madam, if you won’t hear of them, how can I ever hope to see you mend them?

“Lady T. Why, I don’t intend to mend them—­I can’t mend them—­you know I have try’d to do it an hundred times, and—­it hurts me so—­I can’t bear it!

“Lord T. And I, madam, can’t bear this daily licentious abuse of your time and character.

“Lady T. Abuse! astonishing! when the universe knows, I am never better company than when I am doing what I have a mind to!  But to see this world! that men can never get over that silly spirit of contradiction—­why, but last Thursday, now—­there you wisely amended one of my faults, as you call them—­you insisted upon my not going to the masquerade—­and pray, what was the consequence?  Was not I as cross as the Devil, all the night after?  Was not I forc’d to get company at home?  And was it not almost three o’clock in the morning before I was able to come to myself again?  And then the fault is not mended neither—­for next time I shall only have twice the inclination to go:  so that all this mending and mending, you see, is but darning an old ruffle, to make it worse than it was before.