; then took in her hand her small casket of
jewels, in case she might find them useful intercessors, and retiring to
the darkest and most sequestered nook, sat down on a seat of moss,
and awaited till fate should give her some chance of rescue, or of
propitiating an intercessor.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Have you not seen the partridge quake,
Viewing the hawk approaching nigh?
She cuddles close beneath the brake,
Afraid to sit, afraid to fly, --PRIOR.

It chanced, upon that memorable morning, that one of the earliest of
the huntress train, who appeared from her chamber in full array for the
chase, was the Princess for whom all these pleasures were instituted,
England's Maiden Queen. I know not if it were by chance, or out of the
befitting courtesy due to a mistress by whom he was so much honoured,
that she had scarcely made one step beyond the threshold of her
chamber ere Leicester was by her side, and proposed to her, until the
preparations for the chase had been completed, to view the Pleasance,
and the gardens which it connected with the Castle yard.

To this new scene of pleasures they walked, the Earl's arm affording his
Sovereign the occasional support which she required, where flights
of steps, then a favourite ornament in a garden, conducted them from
terrace to terrace, and from parterre to parterre. The ladies in
attendance, gifted with prudence, or endowed perhaps with the amiable
desire of acting as they would be done by, did not conceive their duty
to the Queen's person required them, though they lost not sight of her,
to approach so near as to share, or perhaps disturb, the conversation
betwixt the Queen and the Earl, who was not only her host, but also her
most trusted, esteemed, and favoured servant. They contented themselves
with admiring the grace of this illustrious couple, whose robes of state
were now exchanged for hunting suits, almost equally magnificent.

Elizabeth's silvan dress, which was of a pale blue silk, with silver
lace and AIGUILLETTES, approached in form to that of the ancient
Amazons, and was therefore well suited at once to her height and to
the dignity of her mien, which her conscious rank and long habits of
authority had rendered in some degree too masculine to be seen to the
best advantage in ordinary female weeds. Leicester's hunting suit of
Lincoln green, richly embroidered with gold, and crossed by the gay
baldric which sustained a bugle-horn, and a