of myself--only that if it might be
otherwise, I would not willingly return THITHER; yet if it concern your
safety--"

"We will think, Amy, of some other retreat," said Leicester; "and you
shall go to one of my northern castles, under the personage--it will be
but needful, I trust, for a very few days--of Varney's wife."

"How, my Lord of Leicester!" said the lady, disengaging herself from
his embraces; "is it to your wife you give the dishonourable counsel to
acknowledge herself the bride of another--and of all men, the bride of
that Varney?"

"Madam, I speak it in earnest--Varney is my true and faithful servant,
trusted in my deepest secrets. I had better lose my right hand than his
service at this moment. You have no cause to scorn him as you do."

"I could assign one, my lord," replied the Countess; "and I see he
shakes even under that assured look of his. But he that is necessary as
your right hand to your safety is free from any accusation of mine. May
he be true to you; and that he may be true, trust him not too much or
too far. But it is enough to say that I will not go with him unless by
violence, nor would I acknowledge him as my husband were all--"

"It is a temporary deception, madam," said Leicester, irritated by her
opposition, "necessary for both our safeties, endangered by you through
female caprice, or the premature desire to seize on a rank to which
I gave you title only under condition that our marriage, for a time,
should continue secret. If my proposal disgust you, it is yourself has
brought it on both of us. There is no other remedy--you must do what
your own impatient folly hath rendered necessary--I command you."

"I cannot put your commands, my lord," said Amy, "in balance with those
of honour and conscience. I will NOT, in this instance, obey you.
You may achieve your own dishonour, to which these crooked policies
naturally tend, but I will do nought that can blemish mine. How could
you again, my lord, acknowledge me as a pure and chaste matron, worthy
to share your fortunes, when, holding that high character, I had
strolled the country the acknowledged wife of such a profligate fellow
as your servant Varney?"

"My lord," said Varney interposing, "my lady is too much prejudiced
against me, unhappily, to listen to what I can offer, yet it may please
her better than what she proposes. She has good interest with Master
Edmund Tressilian, and could doubtless prevail on him to consent to
be