Almost at once she repented her rash words of release. But Garrick held her to them. He considered himself freed. And they parted. Peg sent back all Garrick's presents. He refused to return hers—they included a pair of diamond shoe buckles she had given him—on the tender plea that they would serve him as reminders of her.
Peg wrote an angry letter, pointing out very clearly the wide gulf between sentiment and graft, and telling Garrick on exactly which side of that gulf his action in regard to the presents placed him. Garrick retaliated by blackening her name on every occasion. She made no reply to any of his dirty slurs; nor spoke of him save in praise.
Thus ended the great love of Peg's life. But there were a host of minor loves to help take its place. Next came Spanger Berry, a fiery Irish actor who, to revenge Peg's supposed wrongs, did his level best on the stage to crowd Garrick out of several of the latter's favorite roles. He did not wholly succeed in this loverly attempt, but he caused Garrick many an hour of uneasiness, and wounded him severely by causing a drop in the actor manager's box-office receipts.
Then came a succession. To quote a biographer who wrote while Peg's name was yet fresh:
An infatuated swain swore that if she did not return his love, he would hang, drown, or shoot himself; and in order not to be responsible for his suicide, she consented to listen to his sighs. Then there came along a gentleman with money who won her affection. Another next presented and outbid the former. Another offered, and she received him in her train.
A fifth appeared, and was well received. A sixth declared his suit, and his suit was not rejected. In a word, a multitude of love's votaries paid their adorations to the shrine of their fair saint, and their fair saint was not cruel.
Then, according to the same chronicler and another, came into Peg's life "a personage." There is no hint as to his identity. Whether she was true to him or not is debatable. But she soon discovered that he had grown tired of her. It was borne to her ears that he was paying court to an heiress; intending to break with Peg, by degrees, if his suit were successful.
The heiress gave a masked ball in honor of her birthday. Peg gained admittance, in male costume, to the affair, and contrived to become her rival's partner in a minuet.
"When she straightway poured so many and such vile stories anent the gentleman's character into the lady's ears that the latter fainted and the ball broke up in confusion."
But Peg had gained her aim, by hopelessly discrediting with the heiress the recreant lover. The match was broken off. Peg felt herself right cozily revenged.