commands, which, if
the lady list not to obey, she knows better how to answer it than I may
pretend to do."

"Now, by Heaven, Janet!" said the Countess, "the false traitor lies
in his throat! He must needs lie, for he speaks to the dishonour of my
noble lord; he must needs lie doubly, for he speaks to gain ends of his
own, equally execrable and unattainable."

"You have misapprehended me, lady," said Varney, with a sulky species
of submission and apology; "let this matter rest till your passion be
abated, and I will explain all."

"Thou shalt never have an opportunity to do so," said the
Countess.--"Look at him, Janet. He is fairly dressed, hath the outside
of a gentleman, and hither he came to persuade me it was my lord's
pleasure--nay, more, my wedded lord's commands--that I should go with
him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of
my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him--HIM there--that very
cloak-brushing, shoe-cleaning fellow--HIM there, my lord's lackey,
for my liege lord and husband; furnishing against myself, Great God!
whenever I was to vindicate my right and my rank, such weapons as would
hew my just claim from the root, and destroy my character to be regarded
as an honourable matron of the English nobility!"

"You hear her, Foster, and you, young maiden, hear this lady," answered
Varney, taking advantage of the pause which the Countess had made in her
charge, more for lack of breath than for lack of matter--"you hear that
her heat only objects to me the course which our good lord, for the
purpose to keep certain matters secret, suggests in the very letter
which she holds in her hands."

Foster here attempted to interfere with a face of authority, which he
thought became the charge entrusted to him, "Nay, lady, I must needs say
you are over-hasty in this. Such deceit is not utterly to be condemned
when practised for a righteous end I and thus even the patriarch Abraham
feigned Sarah to be his sister when they went down to Egypt."

"Ay, sir," answered the Countess; "but God rebuked that deceit even in
the father of His chosen people, by the mouth of the heathen Pharaoh.
Out upon you, that will read Scripture only to copy those things which
are held out to us as warnings, not as examples!"

"But Sarah disputed not the will of her husband, an it be your
pleasure," said Foster, in reply, "but did as Abraham commanded, calling
herself his sister, that it might be well