ood
pleasure. In a word, she ascribes the secrecy and obscurity in which she
is kept to your secret counsel to my lord, and to my strict agency; and
so she loves us both as a sentenced man loves his judge and his jailor."

"She must love us better ere she leave this place, Anthony," answered
Varney. "If I have counselled for weighty reasons that she remain here
for a season, I can also advise her being brought forth in the full blow
of her dignity. But I were mad to do so, holding so near a place to
my lord's person, were she mine enemy. Bear this truth in upon her as
occasion offers, Anthony, and let me alone for extolling you in her ear,
and exalting you in her opinion--KA ME, KA THEE--it is a proverb all
over the world. The lady must know her friends, and be made to judge of
the power they have of being her enemies; meanwhile, watch her strictly,
but with all the outward observance that thy rough nature will permit.
'Tis an excellent thing that sullen look and bull-dog humour of thine;
thou shouldst thank God for it, and so should my lord, for when there
is aught harsh or hard-natured to be done, thou dost it as if it flowed
from thine own natural doggedness, and not from orders, and so my lord
escapes the scandal.--But, hark--some one knocks at the gate. Look
out at the window--let no one enter--this were an ill night to be
interrupted."

"It is he whom we spoke of before dinner," said Foster, as he looked
through the casement; "it is Michael Lambourne."

"Oh, admit him, by all means," said the courtier; "he comes to give some
account of his guest; it imports us much to know the movements of Edmund
Tressilian.--Admit him, I say, but bring him not hither; I will come to
you presently in the Abbot's library."

Foster left the room, and the courtier, who remained behind, paced the
parlour more than once in deep thought, his arms folded on his bosom,
until at length he gave vent to his meditations in broken words, which
we have somewhat enlarged and connected, that his soliloquy may be
intelligible to the reader.

"'Tis true," he said, suddenly stopping, and resting his right hand on
the table at which they had been sitting, "this base churl hath fathomed
the very depth of my fear, and I have been unable to disguise it from
him. She loves me not--I would it were as true that I loved not her!
Idiot that I was, to move her in my own behalf, when wisdom bade me be
a true broker to my lord! And this fatal error has pla