The Conscious Lovers

bring to shame, so they gratify⁠— Indiana Sir, you are going into very great errors; but as you are pleased to say you see something in me that has changed at least the colour of your suspicions, so has your appearance altered mine, and made me earnestly attentive to what has any way concerned you to inquire into my affairs and character. Mr. Sealand How sensibly, with what an air she talks! Indiana Good sir, be seated, and tell me tenderly; keep all your suspicions concerning me alive, that you may in a proper and prepared way acquaint me why the care of your daughter obliges a person of your seeming worth and fortune to be thus inquisitive about a wretched, helpless, friendless⁠—Weeping. But I beg your pardon; though I am an orphan, your child is not; and your concern for her, it seems, has brought you hither.⁠—I’ll be composed; pray go on, sir. Mr. Sealand How could Mr. Bevil be such a monster, to injure such a woman? Indiana No, sir, you wrong him; he has not injured me. My support is from his bounty. Mr. Sealand Bounty! when gluttons give high prices for delicates, they are prodigious bountiful. Indiana Still, still you will persist in that error. But my own fears tell me all. You are the gentleman, I suppose, for whose happy daughter he is designed a husband by his good father, and he has, perhaps, consented to the overture. He was here this morning, dressed beyond his usual plainness⁠—nay, most sumptuously⁠—and he is to be, perhaps, this night a bridegroom. Mr. Sealand I own he was intended such; but, madam, on your account, I have determined to defer my daughter’s marriage till I am satisfied from your own mouth of what nature are the obligations you are under to him. Indiana His actions, sir; his eyes have only made me think he designed to make me the partner of his heart. The goodness and gentleness of his demeanour made me misinterpret all. ’Twas my own hope, my own passion, that deluded me; he never made one amorous advance to me. His large heart, and bestowing hand, have only helped the miserable; nor know I why, but from his mere delight in virtue, that I have been his care and the object on which to indulge and please himself with pouring favours. Mr. Sealand Madam, I know not why it is, but I, as well as you, am methinks afraid of entering into the matter I came about; but ’tis the same thing as if we had talked never so distinctly⁠—he ne’er shall have a daughter of mine. Indiana If you say this from what you think of me, you wrong yourself and him. Let not me, miserable though I may be, do injury to my benefactor. No, sir, my treatment ought rather to reconcile you to his virtues. If to bestow without a prospect of return; if to delight in supporting what might, perhaps, be thought an object of desire, with no other view than to be her guard against those who would not be so disinterested; if these actions, sir, can in a careful parent’s eye commend him to a daughter, give yours, sir, give her to my honest, generous Bevil. What have I to do but sigh, and weep, and rave, run wild, a lunatic in chains, or, hid in darkness, mutter in distracted starts and broken accents my strange, strange story! Mr. Sealand Take comfort, madam. Indiana All my comfort must be to expostulate in madness, to relieve with frenzy my despair, and shrieking to demand of fate why⁠—why was I born to such variety of sorrows. Mr. Sealand If I have been the least occasion⁠— Indiana No, ’twas Heaven’s high will I should be such; to be plundered in my cradle! tossed on the seas! and even there an infant captive! to lose my mother, hear but of my father! to be adopted! lose my adopter! then plunged again into worse calamities! Mr. Sealand An infant captive! Indiana Yet then, to find the most charming of mankind, once more to set me free from what I thought the last distress, to load me with his services, his bounties, and his favours; to support my very life in a way that stole, at the same time, my very soul itself from me. Mr. Sealand And has young Bevil been this worthy man? Indiana Yet then, again, this very man to take another! without leaving me the right, the pretence of easing my fond heart with tears! For, oh! I can’t reproach him, though the same hand that raised me to this height now throws me down the precipice. Mr. Sealand Dear lady! Oh, yet one moment’s patience: my heart grows full with your affliction.⁠—But yet there’s something in your story that⁠— Indiana My portion here is bitterness and sorrow. Mr. Sealand Do not think so. Pray answer me: does Bevil know your name and family? Indiana Alas! too well! Oh, could I be any other thing than what I am⁠—I’ll tear away all traces of my former self, my little ornaments, the remains of my first state, the hints of what I ought to have been⁠— In her disorder she throws away a bracelet, which Sealand takes up, and looks earnestly on it. Mr. Sealand Ha! what’s this? My eyes are not deceived! It is, it is the same! the very bracelet which I bequeathed to my wife at our last mournful parting. Indiana What said you, sir? Your wife? Whither does my fancy carry me? What means this unfelt motion at my heart? And yet, again my fortune but deludes me; for if I err not, sir, your name is Sealand; but my lost father’s name was⁠— Mr. Sealand Danvers; was it not? Indiana What new amazement? That is, indeed, my family. Mr. Sealand Know, then, when my misfortunes drove me to the Indies, for reasons too tedious now to mention, I changed my name of Danvers into Sealand. Enter Isabella. Isabella If yet there wants an explanation of your wonder, examine well this face (yours, sir, I