nce of your Highness, although, alas! an angry one, has had
power to do that for me in which Esculapius might have failed?"

"How is this?" said Elizabeth hastily, looking at Varney; "hath your
lord been ill?"

"Something of a fainting fit," answered the ready-witted Varney, "as
your Grace may observe from his present condition. My lord's haste would
not permit me leisure even to bring his dress into order."

"It matters not," said Elizabeth, as she gazed on the noble face and
form of Leicester, to which even the strange mixture of passions by
which he had been so lately agitated gave additional interest; "make
room for my noble lord. Your place, Master Varney, has been filled up;
you must find a seat in another barge."

Varney bowed, and withdrew.

"And you, too, our young Squire of the Cloak," added she, looking at
Raleigh, "must, for the time, go to the barge of our ladies of honour.
As for Tressilian, he hath already suffered too much by the caprice of
women that I should aggrieve him by my change of plan, so far as he is
concerned."

Leicester seated himself in his place in the barge, and close to the
Sovereign. Raleigh rose to retire, and Tressilian would have been so
ill-timed in his courtesy as to offer to relinquish his own place to his
friend, had not the acute glance of Raleigh himself, who seemed no in
his native element, made him sensible that so ready a disclamation of
the royal favour might be misinterpreted. He sat silent, therefore,
whilst Raleigh, with a profound bow, and a look of the deepest
humiliation, was about to quit his place.

A noble courtier, the gallant Lord Willoughby, read, as he thought,
something in the Queen's face which seemed to pity Raleigh's real or
assumed semblance of mortification.

"It is not for us old courtiers," he said, "to hide the sunshine from
the young ones. I will, with her Majesty's leave, relinquish for an
hour that which her subjects hold dearest, the delight of her Highness's
presence, and mortify myself by walking in starlight, while I forsake
for a brief season the glory of Diana's own beams. I will take place
in the boat which the ladies occupy, and permit this young cavalier his
hour of promised felicity."

The Queen replied, with an expression betwixt mirth and earnest, "If you
are so willing to leave us, my lord, we cannot help the mortification.
But, under favour, we do not trust you--old and experienced as you
may deem yourself--with the care of