“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.

“As for seeing you,” she wrote, “I am resolved I never will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can order so as to be out of your way of seeing me.  But surely you must confess that you have been the falsest creature upon earth to me.  I must own that I believe I shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it, and give God thanks, though too late I see my error.”

Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man!  After spurning Churchill for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a man’s constancy.  But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have done.  He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady’s anger.  He broke off the negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a solace in the Duke of York’s arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.