But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is "extreme ill with the headache," and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He vows, in his pain,
"by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess," he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I shall come."
At last the iceberg thaws a little—though it is only to charge him with unkindness! She assumes the rôle of virtue; and, with a woman's capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which she herself has visited on him.
"Your not writing to me," she says, "made me very uneasy, for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine."
Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses him of unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.
"That would hinder you," she says, with delicious, if cruel satire, "from seeing the play, which I fear would be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and, without any compliment to me, send me word if you can come to me without any prejudice to your health."
At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling, if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.
But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun, was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman for his ambitious purpose—one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine penniless beauty.
For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to greatness!
No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she flew into a towering rage. "Marry a shocking creature for money!" she raved; "and this was what all his passionate protestations of love amounted to!" Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.