ester's secret marriage with the widowed
Countess of Essex, a twelvemonth before, now came out in a storm of
gossip, and threw the jealous queen into a rage. Leicester was dismissed
from court; and Philip Sidney, as his nephew, though not actually exiled
from the queen's presence, received treatment at her hands that was far
more galling to his proud spirit than would have been dismissal.

Nothing could have been more humiliating to Sidney's highstrung and
sensitive temperament than to be kept dangling about a court where the
queen turned but cold glances upon him, and where her nobles were
permitted to slight him, after the usual manner of courtiers who "kick
whom royalty kicks, and hug whom royalty hugs."

Philip Sidney was a most unusual courtier. He had more than once held
out a manly hand to one who had come under her Majesty's disfavor, but
whom he regarded as stanch and deserving; and he had not failed to
condemn where she smiled, if he felt that condemnation was deserved.

With his great patron dismissed from royal favor, and London full of gay
French and English courtiers who looked upon him as an enemy, Philip
Sidney stood almost alone. Yet was he in no whit daunted, nor did he
yield one hair's breadth of the high ground he had taken. His was that
finer courage that can dare the whole world for a principle and stand
alone upon the right.

As may be imagined, this independence of spirit was most distasteful to
the vain and fickle queen; but Sidney's grace and talents and personal
beauty rendered him a courtier with whom she was unwilling to dispense.
The queen had favored him for these lesser gifts, but the great heart of
the English people loved him for the chivalric spirit _she_ valued not,
and for the indomitable manliness that would not truckle--not even to
the queen.

During this period of her Majesty's displeasure toward him, Sidney was
often stung to the quick by petty slights from his fellow-courtiers, but
on one occasion the offender went too far. The brutal but powerful Earl
of Oxford--head of the party who favored the proposed marriage--had long
been a rival of Sidney's in the queen's favor, and there was no love
lost between them.

One day at Whitehall, as Philip Sidney and some of his friends were
engaged in a game of tennis, the Earl of Oxford entered the court,
uninvited, and demanded a part in the game. The presence of a number of
French courtiers as lookers-on and listeners led him to ass