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 naivete 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 chamber with the aid of all the approved resources and ruses of romance--the disguise, the convenient tree, the signal set in the window, the lover's serenade.

And when the lover, who dared all risks to his lady and to himself for a stolen interview with her night by night, finally encounters Tresham, he is instantly paralysed, and will not even lift a sword in his own defence.