"Clothes can be bought anywhere."
"Not my clothes," answered Judith lightly. "Do you suppose I could live in any gown that was not made by Mrs. Tempest? She sent me home a lutestring nightgown of the sweetest sea-green only yesterday. I must take that with me whenever I go. You don't know how well I look in it."
"Incomparable, love, I am assured; like Venus Anadyomene with the green shining water rippling over her round white limbs. Well, we will wait for the lutestring nightgown, if needs must, and half a dozen pack-horse loads of gowns and furbelows, if you will; only let our flight be immediate. I can live no longer without you."
"And I scarce exist without you, dearest," she answered frankly. "I move to and fro like a sleepwalker; I answer questions at random; I betray myself twenty times an hour, were there any one shrewd enough to observe me. I am lost, overwhelmed in the deep whirlpool of love."
"Let it be to-morrow night. I will have a coach-and-four waiting at the end of Gerard Street—"
"Too fashionable, too conspicuous a spot."
"Or in the darkest corner of Leicester Fields. We can put on another pair of leaders in the Kent Road, and then as fast as they can go to Dover. You must find some way of getting rid of Topsparkle for an hour or two."
"Not to-morrow night. That is impossible. He is to take me to Duchess Henrietta's concert. He is very punctilious about these entertainments, and has a passion for appearing in great houses with me."
"Run away from the concert."
"No, no, no, that were as awkward as from these gardens. I am thinking of my gowns. They must be got off somehow in a wagon, sent as if they were for Ringwood Abbey—old clothes to be worn out among rustics, I can say—and you must tell me where to send the trunks; to some inn on the Dover road, I suppose, whence they can follow us to France. My diamonds I can take with me."