Enter DORALICE, and looks amazed, seeing them.

Rho. Doralice!  I am thunder-struck to see you here.

Pala. So am I! quite thunder-struck.  Was it you, that called me within?—­I must be impudent.

Rho. How came you hither, spouse?

Pala. Ay, how came you hither?  And, which is more, how could you be here without my knowledge?

Dor. [To her husband.] O, gentlemen, have I caught you i’faith! have I broke forth in ambush upon you!  I thought my suspicions would prove true.

Rho. Suspicions! this is very fine, spouse!  Prithee, what suspicions?

Dor. O, you feign ignorance:  Why, of you and Melantha; here have I staid these two hours, waiting with all the rage of a passionate, loving wife, but infinitely jealous, to take you two in the manner; for hither I was certain you would come.

Rho. But you are mistaken, spouse, in the occasion; for we came hither on purpose to find Palamede, on intelligence he was gone before.

Pala. I’ll be hanged then, if the same party, who gave you intelligence I was here, did not tell your wife you would come hither.  Now I smell the malice on’t on both sides.

Dor. Was it so, think you? nay, then, I’ll confess my part of the malice too.  As soon as ever I spied my husband and Melantha come together, I had a strange temptation to make him jealous in revenge; and that made me call Palamede, Palamede! as though there had been an intrigue between us.

Mel. Nay, I avow, there was an appearance of an intrigue between us too.

Pala. To see how things will come about!

Rho. And was it only thus, my dear Doralice? [Embrace.

Dor. And did I wrong n’own Rhodophil, with a false suspicion?
          
                                           [Embracing him.

Pala. [Aside.] Now I am confident we had all four the same design:  ’Tis a pretty odd kind of game this, where each of us plays for double stakes:  This is just thrust and parry with the same motion; I am to get his wife, and yet to guard my own mistress.  But I am vilely suspicious, that, while I conquer in the right wing, I shall be routed in the left; for both our women will certainly betray their party, because they are each of them for gaining of two, as well as we; and I much fear.

If their necessities and ours were known,
They have more need of two, than we of one.
[Exeunt, embracing one another.

ACT IV.  SCENE I.

Enter LEONIDAS, musing; AMALTHEA, following him.

Amal. Yonder he is; and I must speak or die;
And yet ’tis death to speak:  yet he must know
I have a passion for him, and may know it
With a less blush; because to offer it
To his low fortunes, shows I loved before,
His person, not his greatness.