“I would have more, madam,” he cried, and, bending, took both her hands in his and kissed them many times with a vehemence which startled her.
“Good-bye,” she said, and her slight form wavered like a reed, “good-bye, poor John, dear John, try to think well of me always. And now, let me go.”
But John had fallen on his knees in the green bower, and his face, as he uplifted it, seemed bright with a kind of white radiance.
“Oh, love,” he cried in a broken whisper, “love, stoop to me!”
He drew her gently towards him, and she did not resist, and they kissed each other shyly, tenderly, wonderingly, as the first man and woman may have kissed beneath the blossoming trees of Eden.
Then the shrill cry came nearer, and there was a sound of pattering feet, and in a moment she was gone, and John Cotley was left alone to awake from his dream.
* * *
One week after the events which had so disturbed the placid current of John Cotley’s life, that unwise young gentleman might have been discerned making his way into Sadler’s Wells Play-house amid a crowd of more seasoned play-goers.
He had struggled fruitlessly against the overpowering desire to see Lady Lucy again; everything indeed had seemed to point out the folly of his enterprise; the prejudices of a lifetime, the oft-repeated axioms of those whom he had loved and lost, his own diffidence, the absolute hopelessness of his passion, but none of these considerations had been strong enough to outweigh the memory of the girl’s tantalising words: “Did you chance to be at Sadler’s Wells Playhouse on this day se’en-night you would see me there!” And then again, “You remember the adage, ‘Faint heart’—.”
Surely no one could say that John Cotley’s heart was faint this evening; on the contrary, it beat so loud and strong that he wondered his neighbours did not turn to look at him. When he entered the building and took his seat the whole place seemed to swim round him, and the play-bill fluttered in his hand. But by-and-by he began to regain his self-possession; the lights which had danced before his gaze settled steadily in their places, and he took courage to rise and cast a searching glance round the house; but strain his eyes as he might he could not discover Lady Lucy. The house, indeed, seemed packed from pit to topmost gallery, but amidst all the rows and rows of faces hers was missing. After concluding his futile search for the twentieth time he sat down disconsolately, and, to hide his confusion on perceiving the amused and curious stare of his neighbours, he fell to examining his play-bill. At first the words floated meaninglessly before his eyes, but by-and-by one of them took shape and assumed, indeed, an odd familiarity.