nobleman, with the deep-engrained family pride of his order, had
suffered, or was to suffer, dishonour. But this seemingly commonplace
_motif_ was developed in a strange and unfamiliar ethical atmosphere--an
atmosphere of moral ideas which seemed to embrace both those who upheld
the feudal honour and those who "blotted" it; to hint at a purity deeper
than sin. In a more sinister sense than _Colombe's Birthday_, this play
might have been prefaced by the beautiful motto of its successor:--

"Ivy and violet, what do ye here
With blossom and shoot in the warm spring weather
Hiding the arms of Montecchi and Vere?"

The love of Mildred and Mertoun, which blots the Tresham 'scutcheon, is
in origin as innocent as that which breaks into flower across the royal
ambitions of Colombe; and their childlike purity of passion becomes, in
spite of the wrong to which it has led them, the reconciling fact upon
which at the close all animosities and resentments die away. The
conception is genuinely tragic, for the doom which descends upon them
all is a Nemesis which they have all contributed to provoke, but which
none of them deserves; and which precisely the blended nobility and
naïveté of Mildred and Mertoun prevents from passing by them altogether.
More mature or less sensitive lovers would have found an issue from the
situation as easily as an ordinary Hamlet from his task of vengeance.
But Mertoun and Mildred are at once too timid and too audacious, too
tremulous in their consciousness of guilt, too hardy and reckless in
their mutual devotion, to carry through so difficult a game. Mertoun
falters and stammers in his suit to Tresham; Mildred stands mute at her
brother's charge, incapable of evasion, only resolute not to betray.
Yet these same two children in the arts of politic self-defence are
found recklessly courting the peril of midnight meetings in Mildred's