She’s all safe; but she said that she wished first to meet a certain woman, a friend of hers, with whom this was a matter of interest in common, and I’m sure she’ll come.MELAENIS(apart.) She’ll be discovering me, and adding her own distress to mine.PHANOSTRATA Make me acquainted what you now wish me to do.LAMPADISCUS Go in-doors, and be of good heart. If your husband shall come, bid him wait at home, lest he should be required by me, if I want him for anything. I’m going to run back to the old woman.PHANOSTRATA Lampadio, prithee, do take care.LAMPADISCUS I’ll have this matter well managed.PHANOSTRATA I trust in the Gods and in yourself.LAMPADISCUS And I in the same.—that you’ll now go home.(PHANOSTRATA goes into her house.)MELAENIS(coming forward.) Young man, stay and listen.LAMPADISCUS What, are you calling to me, woman? MELAENIS To you.LAMPADISCUS What’s the matter? For I’m fully engaged.MELAENIS(Pointing to the house of DEMIPHO.) Who lives there? LAMPADISCUS Demipho, my master. MELAENIS It is he, I suppose, that has betrothed his daughter with such great wealth to Alcesimarchus?LAMPADISCUS It is he himself. MELAENIS How now, you? What other daughter, then, are you people now in search of?LAMPADISCUS I’ll tell you; not his daughter by his wife, but his wife’s daughter.MELAENIS What’s the meaning of that speech?LAMPADISCUS By a former woman, I say, my master had a daughter born.MELAENIS Surely, just now you said you were in search of the daughter of her who has been talking here.LAMPADISCUS Her daughter I am in search of.MELAENIS In what way then, pray, is she a former woman, who is now his wife?LAMPADISCUS Woman, whoever you are, you weary me with your prating. The middle womanThe middle woman: Medioxumam. The middle woman, although his first wife, and the mother of the daughter whom he had betrothed to Alcesimarchus; he having had Phanostrata the first, as a woman (when he ravished her), but not as a wife until after the death of his first wife. whom he had for a wife, of her this maiden was born that’s being given to Alcesimarchus. That wife is dead. Do you understand now?MELAENISI understand that quite well; but it’s this knotty point I’m enquiring about, how the first can be the last, the last be the first.LAMPADISCUS The fact is this; this woman he ravished before he took her home as his wife; before that she was pregnant, and before that she gave birth to a daughter: after she gave birth to her, she ordered the infant to be exposed; I myself exposed her; another woman took her away; I was on the look-out; after that, my master married her. That girl, her daughter, we are now in search of. (MELAENIS turns aside her head.) Why now, with face upturned, are you looking up towards the heavens?MELAENIS Now, then, be off at once whither you were hastening; I won’t detain you; I understand it now.