Enter LAURA and VIOLETTA, striving about a letter, which
  LAURA holds.

Vio. Let it go, I say.

Lau. I say, let you go.

Vio. Nay, sweet sister Laura.

Lau. Nay, dear Violetta, it is in vain to contend; I am resolved I’ll see it. [Plucks the paper from VIOLETTA.

Vio. But I am resolved you shall not read it.  I know not what authority this is which you assume, or what privilege a year or two can give you, to use this sovereignty over me.

Lau. Do you rebel, young gentlewoman?  I’ll make you know I have a double right over you.  One, as I have more years, and the other, as I have more wit.

Vio. Though I am not all air and fire, as you are, yet that little wit I have will serve to conduct my affairs without a governess.

Lau. No, gentlewoman, but it shall not.  Are you fit, at fifteen, to be trusted with a maidenhead?  It is as much as your betters can manage at full twenty.

  For ’tis of a nature so subtile,
    That, if it’s not luted with care,
  The spirit will work through the bottle,
    And vanish away into air.

  To keep it, there nothing so hard is,
    ’Twill go betwixt waking and sleeping;
  The simple too weak for a guard is,
    And no wit would be plagued with the keeping._

Vio. For aught I see, you are as little to be trusted with your madness, as I with my simplicity; and, therefore, pray restore my letter.

Lau. [Reading it.] What’s here?  An humble petition for a private meeting?  Are you twittering at that sport already, mistress novice?

Vio. How!  I a novice at ripe fifteen?  I would have you to know, that I have killed my man before I was fourteen, and now am ready for another execution.

Lau. A very forward rose-bud:  You open apace, gentlewoman.  I find indeed your desires are quick enough; but where will you have cunning to carry on your business with decency and secrecy?  Secrecy, I say, which is a main part of chastity in our sex.  Where wit, to be sensible of the delicacies of love? the tenderness of a farewell-sigh for an absence? the joy of a return? the zeal of a pressing hand? the sweetness of little quarrels, caused and cured by the excess of love? and, in short, the pleasing disquiets of the soul, always restless, and wandering up and down in a paradise of thought, of its own making?

Vio. If I understood not thus much before, I find you are an excellent instructor; and that argues you have had a feeling of the cause in your time too, sister.

Lau. What have I confessed before I was aware!  She’ll find out my inclination to that stranger, whom I have only seen, and to whom I have never spoken—­[Aside.] No, good Violetta, I never was in love; all my experience is from plays and romances.  But, who is this man, to whom you have promised an assignation?