instantly. My Lords of Sussex and Leicester, I bid you once more to join hands-and, 'S death! he that refuses shall taste of our Tower fare ere he see our face again. I will lower your proud hearts ere we part, and that I promise, on the word of a Queen!" "The prison," said Leicester, "might be borne, but to lose your Grace's presence were to lose light and life at once. Here, Sussex, is my hand." "And here," said Sussex, "is mine in truth and honesty ; but-" "Nay, under favour you shall add no more," said the Queen, "Why, this is as it should be," she added, looking on them more favourably, "and when you, the shepherds of the people, unite to protect them, it shall be well with the flock we rule over. For, my lords, I tell you plainly your follies and your brawls lead to strange disorders among your servants. My lord of Leicester, you have a gentleman in your household called Varney?" "Yes, gracious madam," replied Leicester, "I presented him to kiss your royal hand when you were last at Nonsuch." "His outside was well enough," said the Queen, "but scarce so fair, I should have thought, as to have caused a maiden of honourable birth and hopes to barter her fame for his good looks, and become his paramour. Yet so it is-this fellow of yours hath stolen the daughter of Sir Hugh Robsart of Lidcote Hall, and she hath fled with him from her father's house like a castaway. My Lord of Leicester, are you ill, that you look so deadly pale?" "No, gracious madam," said Leicester; and it required every effort to bring forth these words. "Or is "You are surely ill, my lord?" said Elizabeth. there more in this than we see-or than you, my lord, wish that we should see? Where is this Varney? Who saw him?” "An it please your Grace," said Bowyer, "it is the same against whom I this instant closed the door of the presenceroom." "An it please me?" repeated Elizabeth sharply, not at that moment in the humour of being pleased with anything. "It does not please me that he should pass saucily into my presence, or that you should exclude from it one who came to justify himself from an accusation." "May it please you," answered the perplexed usher, "if I knew in such case how to bear myself, I would take heed—” "You should have reported the fellow's desire to us, Master Usher, and taken our directions. You think yourself a great man, because but now we chid a nobleman on your accountyet, after all, we hold you but as the lead-weight that keeps the door fast. Call this Varney hither instantly-there is one, Tressilian, also mentioned in this petition-let them both come before us," She was obeyed, and Tressilian and Varney appeared accordingly. "Is it true, sirrah," said the Queen, "that you have brought to infamy a young lady of birth and breeding, the daughter of Sir Hugh Robsart of Lidcote Hall?" Varney kneeled down, and replied, with a look of the most profound contrition, "There had been some love passages betwixt him and Mistress Amy Robsart." "Love passages! What passages, thou knave? and why not ask the wench's hand from her father, if thou hadst any honesty in thy love for her?" "An it please your Grace," said Varney, still on his knees, "I dared not do so, for her father had promised her hand to a gentleman of birth and honour-I will do him justice, though I know he bears me ill-will-one Master Edmund Tressilian, whom I now see in the presence." "Soh!" replied the Queen; "and what was your right to make the simple fool break her worthy father's contract, through your love passages, as your conceit and assurance term them?" Madam," replied Varney, "it is in vain to plead the cause of human frailty before a judge to whom it is unknown, or that of love to one who never yields to the passion, which she inflicts upon all others." Elizabeth tried to frown, but smiled in her own despite, as she answered, "Thou are a marvellously impudent knave. Art thou married to the girl? ” Leicester's feelings became so complicated and so painfully intense, that it seemed to him as if his life was to depend on the answer made by Varney, who, after a moment's real hesitation, answered "Yes." "Thou false villain!" said Leicester, bursting forth into rage, yet unable to add another word to the sentence. "Nay, my lord," said the Queen, "we will, by your leave, stand between this fellow and your anger. We have not yet done with him. Knew your master, my Lord of Leicester, of this fair work of yours? Speak truth, I command thee, and I will be thy warrant from danger on every quarter." "Gracious madam," said Varney, "to speak Heaven's truth, my lord was the cause of the whole matter." "Thou villain, wouldst thou betray me?" said Leicester. "Speak on," said the Queen hastily, her cheek colouring, and her eyes sparkling, as she addressed Varney; "speak on -here no commands are heard but mine." "They are omnipotent, gracious madam," replied Varney; "and to you there can be no secrets. Yet I would not," he added, looking around him, "speak of my master's concerns to other ears.' Queen to those who sur- "Fall back, my lords," said the rounded her, "and do you speak on. do with this guilty intrigue of thine? See, fellow, that thou beliest him not!" "Far be it from me to traduce my noble patron," replied Varney; "yet I am compelled to own that some deep, overwhelming, yet secret feeling, hath of late dwelt in my lord's mind, hath abstracted him from the cares of the household, which he was wont to govern with such religious strictness, and hath left us opportunities to do follies, of which the shame, as in this case, partly falls upon our patron. Without this, I had not had means or leisure to commit the folly which has drawn on me his displeasure; the heaviest to endure by me which I could by any means incur-saving always the yet more dreaded resentment of your Grace." "And in this sense, and no other, hath he been accessory to thy fault?" said Elizabeth. 'Surely, madam, in no other," replied Varney; “but since somewhat hath chanced to him he can scarce be called his own man, Look at him, madam, how pale and trembling he stands-how unlike his usual majesty of manner-yet what has he to fear from aught I can say to your Highness? Ah, madam, since he received that fatal packet!" "What packet, and from whence?" said the Queen eagerly. "From whence, madam, I cannot guess; but I am so near to his person, that I know he has ever since worn, suspended around his neck, and next to his heart, that lock of hair which sustains a small golden jewel shaped like a heart-he speaks to it when alone-he parts not from it when he sleeps-no heathen ever worshipped an idol with such devotion." "Thou art a prying knave to watch thy master so closely, and a tattling knave to tell over again his fooleries. What colour might the braid of hair be that thou pratest of?" “A poet, madam, might call it a thread from the golden web wrought by Minerva; but to my thinking, it was paler than even the purest gold-more like the last parting sunbeam of the softest day in spring." "Why, you are a poet yourself, Master Varney," said the Queen, smiling; "but I have not genius quick enough to follow your rare metaphors. Look round these ladies; is there —is there here, in this presence, any lady, the colour of whose hair reminds thee of that braid? Methinks, without prying into my Lord of Leicester's amorous secrets, I would fain know what kind of locks are like the thread of Minerva's web, or the-what was it?—the last rays of the May-day sun." Varney looked round the presence-chamber, his eye travelling from one lady to another, until at length it rested upon the Queen herself. "I see no tresses," he said, "in this presence worthy of such similes, unless where I dare not look on them." "How, sir knave," said the Queen, "dare you intimate—” "Nay, madam,” replied Varney, shading his eyes with his hand, "it was the beams of the May-day sun that dazzled my weak eyes." "Go to-go to," said the Queen; "thou art a foolish fellow" and turning quickly from him, she walked up to Leicester. Thou hast a prating servant of this same Varney, my lord,” T she said; "it is lucky you trust him with nothing that can hurt you in our opinion, for believe me he would keep no counsel." "From your Highness," said Leicester, dropping gracefully on one knee, "it were treason he should. I would that my heart itself lay before you, barer than the tongue of any servant could strip it." "What, my lord," said Elizabeth, "is there no one little corner over which you would wish to spread a veil? Ah! I see you are confused at the question, and your Queen knows she should not look too deeply into her servants' motives for their faithful duty, lest she see what might, or at least ought to displease her,' Relieved by these last words, Leicester broke out into a torrent of expressions of deep and passionate attachment, which, perhaps, at that moment, were not altogether fictitious, "Take from the poor Dudley," he exclaimed, "all that your bounty has made him, and bid him be the poor gentleman he was when your Grace first shone on him; leave him no more than his cloak and his sword, but let him still boast he has— what in word or deed he never forfeited-the regard of his adored Queen and mistress!" "No, Dudley!" said Elizabeth, raising him with one hand, while she extended the other that he might kiss it; "Elizabeth hath not forgotten that, whilst you were a poor gentleman, despoiled of your hereditary rank, she was as poor a princess, and that in her cause you then ventured all that oppression had left you your life and honour. Rise, my lord, and let my hand go! Rise, and be what you have ever been, the grace of our court, and the support of our throne, Your mistress may be forced to chide your misdemeanours, but never without owning your merits. And so help me, God," she added, turning to the audience, who, with various feelings, witnessed this interesting scene-"so help me God, gentlemen, as I think never sovereign had a truer servant than I have in the noble Earl!" A murmur of assent rose from the Leicesterian faction, which the friends of Sussex dared not oppose. They remained with their eyes fixed on the ground, dismayed as well as mortified by the public and absolute triumph of their opponents, |