 | Antonia |  |
SCENE IV.
Teresa and Ferdinando.TERESA.
Stop! traitor, stop! or if there be a name
Of more perfidious villany expressive,
I'll call thee that, incarnated of Hell!
FERDINANDO.
What means the woman with this noisy riot!
TERESA.
Thou smooth unfathomable villany,
To vent the dev'lish venom of thy guile,
With such insidious plausibility
Against an honest and unworldly man!
FERDINANDO.
Think you, the painter then is innocent?
Think you that one so skill'd in trimming hues,
Is yet so little practiced in his craft
As not to make his visage for the time?—
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Ten years and more; and he is but a stranger:
In all that time, what ill know you of me;
What good of him?
TERESA.
I know that you have been
A flagrant master of my silly sex,
While he has but a mastership attain'd
In forms and shades: spare fruit of patient study.
FERDINANDO.
How should he know of what was done last night?
Answer me that. What spirit serves his ear,
To give advertisement of secret things?
Grant him the skill to spy into our thoughts;
'Tis but the present thought that rules the face;
Still as it shifts, a different guize succeeds;
How then should he know of an act that's past?
He could as well tell when you went to sleep
As know this secret, had he not been told.
Was he a witness, or a party, think you?
But what, Teresa, does the countess say?
TERESA.
She sits disconsolate, and only sighs,
Or starts, as 'twere, by sudden anguish stung;
And frantic flutt'ring, flies from room to room.
FERDINANDO.
When was't she told you what had pass'd?
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Told me!
She never told me.
FERDINANDO.
No! How knew you then?
TERESA.
I guess'd of something dismal by her grief,
And when you told me you were in the room.—
Why do you beat upon your brow so fiercely?
FERDINANDO.
Did she not send you to enquire?
TERESA.
Not she.
FERDINANDO.
Why stir you then so busily in it?
TERESA.
Think you that such a thing should chance, and I
Not seek to learn the truth and circumstance.
FERDINANDO.
We are, Teresa, but a pair of fools.
In all this, there may be but our conception.
Sift you herself—'tis meet she should be vext,—
That such as I broke in upon her sleep.
TERESA.
But how came you to think of Carravagio?
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I learnt from you what had, or may have, chanc'd,
And knowing his nocturnal rambles thought—
TERESA.
You turn my fancy, fellow, all awry;
I may be wrong, and yield to false conceits,
Or thou art but a deep and deeper knave.
| Antonia | |