sance when the Queen has retired to her chamber."

"Enough," said Tressilian, and withdrew; while a sort of rapture seemed
for the moment to occupy the mind of Leicester.

"Heaven," he said, "is at last favourable to me, and has put within my
reach the wretch who has branded me with this deep ignominy--who has
inflicted on me this cruel agony. I will blame fate no more, since I am
afforded the means of tracing the wiles by which he means still further
to practise on me, and then of at once convicting and punishing his
villainy. To my task--to my task! I will not sink under it now, since
midnight, at farthest, will bring me vengeance."

While these reflections thronged through Leicester's mind, he again made
his way amid the obsequious crowd, which divided to give him passage,
and resumed his place, envied and admired, beside the person of his
Sovereign. But could the bosom of him thus admired and envied have been
laid open before the inhabitants of that crowded hall, with all its dark
thoughts of guilty ambition, blighted affection, deep vengeance, and
conscious sense of meditated cruelty, crossing each other like spectres
in the circle of some foul enchantress, which of them, from the most
ambitious noble in the courtly circle down to the most wretched menial
who lived by shifting of trenchers, would have desired to change
characters with the favourite of Elizabeth, and the Lord of Kenilworth?

New tortures awaited him as soon as he had rejoined Elizabeth.

"You come in time, my lord," she said, "to decide a dispute between us
ladies. Here has Sir Richard Varney asked our permission to depart from
the Castle with his infirm lady, having, as he tells us, your lordship's
consent to his absence, so he can obtain ours. Certes, we have no will
to withhold him from the affectionate charge of this poor young person;
but you are to know that Sir Richard Varney hath this day shown himself
so much captivated with these ladies of ours, that here is our Duchess
of Rutland says he will carry his poor insane wife no farther than the
lake, plunge her in to tenant the crystal palaces that the enchanted
nymph told us of, and return a jolly widower, to dry his tears and to
make up the loss among our train. How say you, my lord? We have seen
Varney under two or three different guises--you know what are his proper
attributes--think you he is capable of playing his lady such a knave's
trick?"

Leicester was confounded, but the danger