“But men have killed themselves at the loss of the women they loved,” urged Lady Strange. “There was Romeo, that Garrick plays so beautifully.”
“’Tis the work of a poet who says in another place, ‘Men have died from time to time, but not for love.’ When men kill themselves at the loss of a woman, you will find they have lost other things as well—fortune and reputation; or their wits, in drink.”
But Lady Strange held that a true lover would not hesitate to mortgage his life for a season of love, if the latter could not be obtained by any means at a lower price. “If he is young, and in love for the first time,” added Rashleigh. But Foxwell and Mrs. Winter remained cynical, and the latter became even derisive, so that the dispute grew warm on the part of the two ladies, who did not disdain to colour their remarks with sly personalities.
The discussion promised to be endless, and was still going on when Georgiana left the table. Not unaffected by the allusions to fatal consequences arising from dangerous love-affairs, she waited in her own rooms till dusk, and then, attended by the faithful Prudence, stole softly down the stairs, and along the terrace to the sunken garden.
CHAPTER IX
SWORDS
As she passed below the room in which her uncle and his friends were, she heard their voices, and observed that one of the windows was open. But to this she attached no importance, unusual as the fact was at that hour, for she had other matters to think of. And indeed the night was not chill, though a slight breeze was stirring the leaves in the garden as she entered it. Leaving Prudence at the foot of the steps, Georgiana swiftly threaded the different alleys of shrubbery to make sure that no person chanced to be in the garden, a precaution she had adopted since the first meetings; but she did not peer under any of the bushes, or behind those that grew close to the wall, for she had not conceived that anybody might come into the garden to hide, or for other purpose than his own pleasure. She went and stood in the gateway near the glen-side. A moment later she saw the dark form of her lover approaching in the gloom of the park, and presently his arms were around her.
“How you tried my patience, sweet!” said he, leading her slowly toward the midst of the garden. “You are later than usual. I was beginning to think you must have appeared already, and that my eyes were so blurred watching the gateway they had failed to see you. Two minutes more, and I should have left my thicket and come to assure myself.”
“Never do that, I beg! Never come into the garden till you see me in the gateway—not even though you hear my voice. Promise me you will not—promise, Everell.”
“I would promise you anything in the world when you ask with that voice and those eyes—anything but to cease loving you or to leave you. But I do believe the goddess of love has this garden in her keeping, and reserves it wholly for us, we have been so safe from intrusion in it.”