-maid's music.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

That very time I saw, but thou could'st not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took
At _a fair Vestal throned by the West_,
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon,
And the Imperial Votress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free."

_Midsummer Night's Dream._

Unfortunately for himself, the duke of Norfolk had not acquired, even
from the severe admonition of a long imprisonment, resolution sufficient
to turn a deaf ear to the enchantments of this syren. His situation was
indeed perplexing: He had entered into the most serious engagements with
his sovereign to abstain from all further intercourse with the queen of
Scots: at the same time the right of Elizabeth to interdict him an
alliance so flattering to his vanity might plausibly be questioned, and
the previous interchange between himself and Mary of solemn promises of
marriage, seemed to have brought him under obligations to her too
sacred to be dissolved by any subsequent stipulation of his, though one
to which Mary herself had been compelled to become a party. Neither had
chivalrous ideas by any means lost their force in this age; and as a
knight and a gentleman the duke must have esteemed himself bound in
honor to procure the release of the captive princess, and to claim
through all perils the fair hand which had been plighted to him.
Impressed by such sentiments, he returned to a letter of eloquent
complaint which she found means to convey to him, an answer filled with
assurances of his inviolable constancy; and the intrigues of the party
were soon renewed with as much activity as ever.

But the vigilance of the ministry of Elizabeth could not long be eluded.
An important packet of letters written by Ridolfi, a Florentine who had
been sent abroad by the party to confer with the pope and with the duke
of Alva, was intercepted; and in consequence of the plots thus unfolded,
the bishop of Ross, who bore the character of Mary's ambassador in
England, was given into private custody. Soon after, a servant of the
duke's, intrusted by him with the conveyance of a sum of money from the
French ambassador to Mary's adherents in Scotland, carried the parcel
containing it to the secretar