the hall, and consequently engaged in some degree in the crowd, felt himself pulled by the cloak, while a voice whispered in his ear, "My Lord I do desire some instanc conference with you."

CHAPTER XIX.

"How is't with me, when every noise appals me?"

Macbeth.

"I DESIRE Some conference with you." The words were simple in themselves, but Lord Leicester was in that alarmed and feverish state of mind, when the most ordinary occurrences seem fraught with alarming import; and he turned hastily round to survey the person by whom they had been spoken. There was nothing remarkable in the speaker's appearance, which consisted of a black silk doublet and short mantle, with a black vizard on his face; for it appeared he had been among the crowd of masks who had thronged into the hall in the retinue of Merlin, though he did not wear any of the extravagant disguises by which most of them were distinguished.

"Who are you, or what do you want with me?" said Leicester, not without betraying, by his accents, the hurried state of his spirits.

"No evil, my lord," answered the mask, "but much good and honour, if you will rightly understand my purpose. But I must speak with you more privately.'

"I can speak with no nameless stranger," answered Leicester, dreading he knew not precisely what from the request of the stranger; "and those who are known to me, must seek another and a fitter time to ask an interview."

He would have hurried away, but the mask still de tained him.

"Those who talk to your lordship of what your own honour demands, have a right over your time, whatever occupations you may lay aside in order to indulge them." "How ! my honour? Who dare impeach it?" said Leicester.

"Your own conduct alone can furnish grounds for accusing it, my lord, and it is that topic on which I would speak with you."

"You are insolent," said Leicester," and abuse the hospitable license of the time, which prevents me from having you punished. I demand your name.

"Edmund Tressilian of Cornwall," answered the mask. "My tongue has been bound by a promise for four-and-twenty hours, the space is passed, I now speak, and do your lordship the justice to address myself first to you."

The thrill of astonishment which had penetrated to Leicester's very heart, at hearing that name pronounced by the voice of the man he most detested, and by whom he conceived himself so deeply injured, at first rendered him immovable, but instantly gave way to such a thirst for revenge as the pilgrim in the desert feels for the water-brooks. He had but sense and self-government enough left to prevent his stabbing to the heart the audacious villain, who, after the ruin he had brought upon him, dared, with such unmoved assurance, thus to practise upon him farther. Determined to suppress for the moment every symptom of agitation, in order to perceive the full scope of Tressilian's purpose, as well as to secure his own vengeance, he answered in a tone so altered by restrained passion as scarce to be intelligible," And what does Master Edmund Tressilian require at my hand ?" "Justice, my lord," answered Tressilian, calmly but firmly.

"Justice," said Leicester, "all men are entitled toYou, Master Tressilian, are peculiarly so, and be assured you shall have it."

"I expect nothing less from your nobleness," answered Tressilian; "but time presses, and I must speak with you to-night-May I wait on you in your chamber ?"

"No," answered Leicester, sternly, "not under a roof, and that roof mine own-We will meet under the free cope of heaven."

"You are discomposed or displeased, my lord," replied Tressilian; "yet there is no occasion for distemperature. The place is equal to me, so you allow me one half hour of your time uninterrupted."

"A shorter time will, I trust, suffice," answered Leicester-" Meet me in the pleasance, 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.

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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 farther to practise on me, and then of at once convicting and punishing his villany. To my task-to my task!-I will not sink under it now, since midnight, at farthest, will bring me vengeance."

en

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 vied, 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 favour ite 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 was urgent, and a reply absolutely necessary. "The ladies," he said, "think too lightly of one of their own sex, in supposing she could deserve such a fate, or too ill of ours, to think it could be inflicted upon an innocent female.”

"Hear him, my ladies," said Elizabeth; "like all his sex he would excuse their cruelty by imputing fickleness

to us.

"Say not us, madam," replied the earl; "we say that meaner women, like the lesser lights of heaven, have revolutions and phases, but who shall impute mutability to the sun, or to Elizabeth?"

The discourse presently afterwards assumed a less perilous tendency, and Leicester continued to support his part in it with spirit, at whatever expense of mental agony. So pleasing did it seem to Elizabeth, that the castle-bell had sounded midnight ere she retired from the company, a circumstance unusual in her quiet and regular habits of disposing of time. Her departure was of course the

18* VOL. II.

signal for breaking up the company, who dispersed to their several places of repose, to dream over the pastimes of the day, or to anticipate those of the morrow.

The unfortunate lord of the castle, and founder of the proud festival, retired to far different thoughts. His direction to the valet who attended him, was to send Varney instantly to his apartment. The messenger returned after some delay, and informed him that an hour had elapsed since Sir Richard Varney had left the castle, by the postern-gate, with three other persons, one of whom was transported in a horse-litter.

"How came he to leave the castle after the watch was set?" said Leicester; "I thought he went not till daybreak."

"He gave satisfactory reasons, as I understand," said the domestic, "to the guard, and, as I hear, showed your lordship's signet”

"True-true," said the earl; "yet he has been hasty -Do any of his attendants remain behind ?"

"Michael Lambourne, my lord," said the valet, "was not to be found when Sir Richard Varney departed, and his master was much incensed at his absence. I saw him but now saddling his horse to gallop after his master."

"Bid him come hither instantly," said Leicester, "I have a message to his master."

The servant left the apartment, and Leicester traversed it for some time in deep meditation-" Varney is over zealous," he said, "over pressing-He loves me, I think -but he hath his own ends to serve, and he is inexorable in pursuit of them. If I fise he rises, and he hath shown himself already but too eager to rid me of this obstacle which seems to stand betwixt me and sovereignty. Yet I will not stoop to bear this disgrace. She shall be punished, but it shall be more advisedly. I already feel, even in anticipation, that over-haste would light the flames of hell in my bosom. No-one victim is enough at once, and that victim already waits me."

He seized upon writing materials, and hastily traced these words:" Sir Richard Varney, we have resolved