SCENE II.

_A Street._

_Enter the Country Wench’s Father._

FATH. Where shall I seek her now? O, if she knew The dangers that attend on women’s lives, She’d[1004] rather lodge under a poor thatch’d roof Than under carved ceilings! She was my joy, And all content that I receiv’d from life, My dear and only daughter. What says the note she left? let me again With staider grief peruse it.

[_Reads._] _Father, wonder not at my so sudden departure, without your leave or knowledge. Thus, under pardon, I excuse it: had you had knowledge of it, I know you would have sought to restrain it, and hinder me from what I have long desired. Being now happily preferred to a gentleman’s service in London, about Holborn, if you please to send, you may hear well of me._ As false as she is disobedient! I’ve made larger inquiry, left no place Where gentry keeps[1005] unsought, yet cannot hear; Which drives me most into a shameful fear. Woe worth th’ infected cause that makes me visit This man-devouring city! where I spent My unshapen youth, to be my age’s curse, And surfeited away my name and state In swinish riots, that now, being sober, I do awake a beggar: I may hate her: Whose youth voids wine, his age is curs’d with water. O heavens, I know the price of ill too well! What the confusions are in whom they dwell, And how soon maids are to their ruins won, One minute, and eternally undone; So in mine may it: may it not be thus! Though she be poor, her honour’s precious. May be my present form, and her fond[1006] fear, May chase her from me, if her eye should get me; And therefore, as my love and wants advise, I’ll serve, until I find her, in disguise. Such is my care to fright her from base evils, I leave calm state to live amongst you, devils. [_Exit._