Kenilworth

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 seduced the daughter of a good old Devonshire knight, 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 he could make to bring forth these few words.

'You are surely ill, my lord?' said Elizabeth, going towards him with hasty speech and hurried step, which indicated the deepest concern. 'Call Masters—call our surgeon in ordinary.—Where be these loitering fools?—we lose the pride of our court through their negligence.—Or is it possible, Leicester,' she continued, looking on him with a very gentle aspect, 'can fear of my displeasure have wrought so deeply on thee? Doubt not for a moment, noble Dudley, that we could blame THEE for the folly of thy retainer—thee, whose thoughts we know to be far otherwise employed. He that would climb the eagle's nest, my lord, cares not who are catching linnets at the foot of the precipice.'

'Mark you that?' said Sussex aside to Raleigh. 'The devil aids him surely; for all that would sink another ten fathom deep seems but to make him float the more easily. Had a follower of mine acted thus—'

'Peace, my good lord,' said Raleigh, 'for God's sake, peace! Wait the change of the tide; it is even now on the turn.'

The acute observation of Raleigh, perhaps, did not deceive him; for Leicester's confusion was so great, and, indeed, for the moment, so irresistibly overwhelming, that Elizabeth, after looking at him with a wondering eye, and receiving no intelligible answer to the unusual expressions of grace and affection which had escaped from her, shot her quick glance around the circle of courtiers, and reading, perhaps, in their faces something that accorded with her own awakened suspicions, she said suddenly, 'Or is 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 presence-room.'

'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 account; yet, 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. Varney's first glance was at Leicester, his second at the Queen. In the looks of the latter there appeared an approaching storm, and in the downcast countenance of his patron he could read no directions in what way he was to trim his vessel for the encounter. He then saw Tressilian, and at once perceived the peril of the situation in which he was placed. But Varney was as bold-faced and ready-witted as he was cunning and unscrupulous—a skilful pilot in extremity, and fully conscious of the advantages which he would obtain could he extricate Leicester from his present peril, and of the ruin that yawned for himself should he fail in doing so.

'Is it true, sirrah,' said the Queen, with one of those searching looks which few had the audacity to resist, 'that you have seduced 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.'

Leicester's flesh quivered with indignation as he heard his dependant make this avowal, and for one moment he manned himself to step forward, and, bidding farewell to the court and the royal favour, confess the whole mystery of the secret marriage. But he looked at Sussex, and the idea of the triumphant smile which would clothe his cheek upon hearing the avowal sealed his lips. 'Not now, at least,' he thought, 'or in this presence, will I afford him so rich a triumph.' And pressing his lips close together, he stood firm and collected, attentive to each word which Varney uttered, and determined to hide to the last the secret on which his court-favour seemed to depend. Meanwhile, the Queen proceeded in her examination of Varney.

'Love passages!' said she, echoing his last words; '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 terms 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'—he paused an instant, and then added, in a very low and timid tone—'which she inflicts upon all others.'

Elizabeth tried to frown, but smiled in her own despite, as she answered, 'Thou art 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 which he had begun with such emphatic passion.

'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.'

'Fall back, my lords,' said the Queen to those who surrounded her, 'and do you speak on. What hath the Earl to 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