Thou'lt find out better when thy time doth come.
Now wouldst believe I love not Master Waller?
I never knew what love was, Lydia;
That is, as your romances have it. First,
I married for a fortune. Having that,
And being freed from him that brought it me,
I marry now, to please my vanity,
A man that is the fashion. O the delight
Of a sensation, and yourself the cause!
To note the stir of eyes, and ears, and tongues,
When they do usher Mistress Waller in,
Late Widow Green, her hand upon the arm
Of her young, handsome husband!--How my fan
Will be in requisition--I do feel
My heart begin to flutter now--my blood
To mount into my cheek! My honeymoon
Will be a month of triumphs!--"Mistress Waller!"
That name, for which a score of damsels sigh,
And but the widow had the wit to win!
Why, it will be the talk of east to west,
And north and south!--The children loved the man,
And lost him so--I liked, but there I stopped;
For what is it to love, but mind and heart
And soul upon another to depend?
Depend upon another? Nothing be
But what another wills? Give up the rights
Of mine own brain and heart? I thank my stars
I never came to that extremity.
[Goes out.]
Lydia. She never loved, indeed! She knows not love,
Except what's told of it! She never felt it.
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