redeem your brother from the angry law; do no stain to your own
gracious person; and much please the absent duke, if peradventure
he shall ever return to have hearing of this business.

ISABELLA.
Let me hear you speak further; I have spirit to do anything that
appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.

DUKE.
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. Have you not heard
speak of Mariana, the sister of Frederick, the great soldier who
miscarried at sea?

ISABELLA.
I have heard of the lady, and good words went with her name.

DUKE.
She should this Angelo have married; was affianced to her by
oath, and the nuptial appointed: between which time of the
contract and limit of the solemnity her brother Frederick was
wrecked at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his
sister. But mark how heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman:
there she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward
her ever most kind and natural; with him the portion and sinew of
her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate husband,
this well-seeming Angelo.

ISABELLA.
Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?