your peace and reputation. I do not speak to you as the father of
Hippolyta, as a man interested for my own family, but as your father,
anxious for your welfare, without wishing to flatter you or to disguise
anything; in short, openly and honestly, as I would wish a child of mine
to be treated upon the like occasion. Do you know how everybody regards
this amour of yours, which in one night has burst forth? How your
yesterday's undertaking is everywhere talked of and ridiculed? What
people think of the whim which, they say, has made you select for a wife
a gipsy outcast, a strolling wench, whose noble occupation was only
begging? I really blushed for you, even more than I did for myself, who
am also compromised by this public scandal. Yes, I am compromised, I
say, I whose daughter, being engaged to you, cannot bear to see her
slighted, without taking offence at it. For shame, Leander; arise from
your humiliation; consider well your infatuation; if none of us are wise
at all times, yet the shortest errors are always the best. When a man
receives no dowry with his wife, but beauty only, repentance follows
soon after wedlock; and the handsomest woman in the world can hardly
defend herself against a lukewarmness caused by possession. I repeat it,
those fervent raptures, those youthful ardours and ecstacies, may make
us pass a few agreeable nights, but this bliss is not at all lasting,
and as our passions grow cool, very unpleasant days follow those
pleasant nights; hence proceed cares, anxieties, miseries, sons
disinherited through their fathers' wrath.

LEAND. All that I now hear from you is no more than what my own reason
has already suggested to me. I know how much I am obliged to you for the
great honour you are inclined to pay me, and of which I am unworthy. In
spite of the passion which sways me, I have ever retained a just sense
of your daughter's merit and virtue: therefore I will endeavour...