“Men have been brought to death by their love-affairs, I grant you,” said Foxwell, “but that is because circumstances arose which they had not foreseen, and from which they could not escape. They have even risked their lives to prosecute their amours, but _risking_ one’s life upon fair odds is a vastly different thing from _deliberately offering_ it in exchange for the indulgence of one’s love. That is what my lady’s words really mean: ‘preferring one’s love to one’s life.’ Such bargains are mentioned in ancient history—as of the youth who, being deeply in love with a queen, agreed to be slain at the end of a certain time if he might pass that time as her accepted lover. Only such an act can really be described as giving one’s life for love; and not the getting killed unintentionally in some matter incident to a love-affair.” “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