and misery?--No; rather than
forego the right of doing myself justice with my own hand on that
accursed villain, I will unfold the whole truth at Elizabeth's
footstool, and let her vengeance descend at once on them and on myself."

Varney saw with great alarm that his lord was wrought up to such a pitch
of agitation, that if he gave not way to him he was perfectly capable of
adopting the desperate resolution which he had announced, and which was
instant ruin to all the schemes of ambition which Varney had formed
for his patron and for himself. But the Earl's rage seemed at once
uncontrollable and deeply concentrated, and while he spoke his eyes
shot fire, his voice trembled with excess of passion, and the light foam
stood on his lip.

His confidant made a bold and successful effort to obtain the mastery of
him even in this hour of emotion. "My lord," he said, leading him to
a mirror, "behold your reflection in that glass, and think if these
agitated features belong to one who, in a condition so extreme, is
capable of forming a resolution for himself."

"What, then, wouldst thou make me?" said Leicester, struck at the change
in his own physiognomy, though offended at the freedom with which Varney
made the appeal. "Am I to be thy ward, thy vassal,--the property and
subject of my servant?"

"No, my lord," said Varney firmly, "but be master of yourself, and of
your own passion. My lord, I, your born servant, am ashamed to see how
poorly you bear yourself in the storm of fury. Go to Elizabeth's
feet, confess your marriage--impeach your wife and her paramour of
adultery--and avow yourself, amongst all your peers, the wittol who
married a country girl, and was cozened by her and her book-learned
gallant. Go, my lord--but first take farewell of Richard Varney, with
all the benefits you ever conferred on him. He served the noble, the
lofty, the high-minded Leicester, and was more proud of depending on him
than he would be of commanding thousands. But the abject lord who stoops
to every adverse circumstance, whose judicious resolves are scattered
like chaff before every wind of passion, him Richard Varney serves not.
He is as much above him in constancy of mind as beneath him in rank and
fortune."

Varney spoke thus without hypocrisy, for though the firmness of mind
which he boasted was hardness and impenetrability, yet he really felt
the ascendency which he vaunted; while the interest which he actually
felt in the fortune