honor, to come to Kenilworth as the supposed wife of his servant. Varney himself is the bearer of the letter. He enters the apartments of the Countess, his dress in disorder from hasty riding through a dark night and foul ways.

"You bring news from my lord, Master Varney - Gracious Heaven, is he ill?"

"No, madam, thank Heaven! Compose yourself, and permit me to take breath ere I communicate my tidings."

"No breath, sir; I know your theatrical arts. Since your breath hath sufficed to bring you hither, it may suffice to tell your tale, at least briefly, and in the gross."

"Madam, we are not alone, and my lord's message was for your ear only."

"Leave us, Janet, and Master Foster, but remain in the next apartment, and within call."

Foster and his daughter retired, agreeably to the Lady Leicester's commands into the next apartment.

All was as still as death, and the voices of those who spoke in the inner chamber were, if they spoke at all, carefully subdued to a tone which could not be heard in the next. At once, however, they were heard to speak fast, thick, and hastily.

"Undo the door, sir, I command you! Undo the door! I will have no other reply! What ho! without there! Janet, alarm the house! Foster, break open the door-I am detained here by a traitor! Use axe and lever, Master Foster - I will be your warrant!"

"It shall not need, madam; if you please to expose my lord's important concerns and your own to the general ear, I will not be your hindrance."

Janet, as soon as the door was open, ran to her mistress; and more slowly, yet with more haste than he was wont, Anthony Foster went to Richard Varney.

"What in the name of Satan, have you done to her?" said Foster to his friend.

"Who, I nothing, nothing but communicated to her her lord's commands, which, if the lady list not to obey, she knows better how to answer it than I may pretend to do."

"Now, by Heaven, Janet, the false traitor lies in his throat! He must needs lie, for he speaks to the dishonor of my noble lord; he must needs lie doubly, for he speaks to gain ends of his own, equally execrable and unattainable."

"You have misapprehended me, lady; let this matter rest till your passion be abated, and I will explain all."

"Thou shalt never have an opportunity to do so," said the Countess. "Look at him, Janet. He is fairly dressed, hath the outside of a gentleman, and hither he came to persuade me it was my lord's pleasure nay, more, my wedded lord's command, that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him—him there, that very cloak-brushing, shoecleaning fellow-him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord and husband; furnishing against myself, great God! whenever I was to vindicate my right and my rank, such weapons as would hew my just claim from the root, and destroy my character to be regarded as an honorable matron of the English nobility!"

"You hear her, Foster, and you, young maiden, hear this lady; you hear that her heat only objects to me the course which our good lord, for the purpose to keep certain matters secret, suggests in the very letter which she holds in her hands."

"Never will I believe that the noble Dudley gave countenance to so dastardly, so dishonorable a plan. Thus I tread on his infamy, if indeed it be, and thus destroy its remembrance forever."

So saying, she tore in pieces Leicester's letter, and stamped, in the extremity of impatience, as if she would have annihilated the minute fragments into which she had rent it.

"Bear witness, she hath torn my lord's letter, in order to burden me with the scheme of his devising; and although it promises naught but danger and trouble to me, she would lay it to my charge, as if it had any purpose of mine own in it."

Thou liest, thou treacherous slave! Thou liest! Let me go, Janet. Were it the last word I have to speak, he lies; he had his own foul ends, and broader he would have displayed them, had my passion permitted me to preserve the silence which at first encouraged him to unfold his vile projects."

"Madam, I entreat you to believe yourself mistaken."

As soon will I believe light darkness. Have I drank of oblivion? Do I not remember former passages, which, known to Leicester, had given thee the preferment of a gallows, instead of the honor of this intimacy? I would I were a man but for five minutes! It were space enough to make a craven like thee confess

his villainy. But go! begone! Tell thy master, that when I take the foul course to which such scandalous deceits as thou hast recommended on his behalf must necessarily lead me, I will give him a rival something worthy of the name. He shall not be supplanted by an ignominious lackey, whose best fortune is to catch a gift of his master's last suit of clothes ere it is threadbare. Go! begone, sir! I scorn thee so much, that I am ashamed to have been angry with thee."

Amy Robsart was confined in a room in one of the towers, while Queen Elizabeth, attended by court-ladies and gentlemen, went on a hunting expedition. When they returned, Lord Leicester determined to see Amy. Disguised as a servant of Varney, who had free access to Amy's room under the character of her husband, Lord Leicester passed the sentinel in safety, and entered the room.

"Dudley!" she exclaimed, "Dudley! and art thou come at last?" And with the speed of lightning she flew to her husband, hung round his neck, and, unheeding the presence of Varney, overwhelmed him with caresses, while she bathed his face in a flood of tears; muttering, at the same time, but in broken and disjointed monosyllables the fondest expressions which Love teaches his votaries.

He received and repaid her caresses with fondness mingled with melancholy, the last of which she seemed scarcely to observe, until the first transport of her own joy was over; when, looking anxiously in his face, she asked if he was ill.

Not in my body, Amy," was his answer.

"Then I will be well, too.- O Dudley! I have been ill!very ill, since we last met! I have been in sickness, in grief, and in danger. But thou art come, and all is joy and health, and safety!" "Alas! Amy," said Leicester," thou hast undone me!"

"I, my lord?" said Amy, her cheek at once losing its transient flush of joy how could I injure that which I love better than myself?"

"I would not upbraid you, Amy," replied the Earl; "but are

you not here contrary to my express commands - and does not your presence here endanger both yourself and me?"

"Does it, does it, indeed!" she exclaimed eagerly: "then why am I here a moment longer? Oh, if you knew by what fears I was urged to quit Cumnor Place! - but I will say nothing of myself only that if it might be otherwise, I would not willingly return thither; yet if it concern your safety

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"We will think, Amy, of some other retreat," said Leicester; 'you shall go to one of my northern castles, under the personage it will be 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 dishonorable counsel to acknowledge herself the bride of another and of all men, the bride of that Varney?"

"Madam, I speak 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, 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 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, 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, in balance with those of honor and conscience. I will not, in this instance, obey you. You may achieve your own dishonor, to which these crooked policies naturally tend, but I will do naught that can blemish mine."

"My lord, 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 con

sent to be her companion to Lidcote Hall, and there she might remain in safety until time permitted the development of this mystery."

Leicester was silent, but stood looking eagerly on Amy, with eyes which seemed to glow as much with suspicion as displeasure. The countess only said, “Would to God I were in my father's house! When I left it I little thought I was leaving peace of mind and honor behind me."

Varney proceeded with a tone of deliberation, "Doubtless this will make it necessary to take strangers into my lord's counsels; but surely the countess will be warrant for the honor of Master Tressilian, and such of her father's family”

"Peace, Varney," said Leicester; "by Heaven, I will strike my dagger into thee, if again thou namest Tressilian as a partner of my counsels!"

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And wherefore not?" said the countess ; "unless they be counsels fitter for such as Varney, than for a man of stainless honor and integrity. My lord, my lord, bend no angry brows on me — it is the truth, and it is I who speak it. I once did Tressilian wrong for your sake. I will not do him the further injustice of being silent when his honor is brought into question. I can forbear," she said, looking at Varney, "to pull the mask off hypocrisy, but I will not permit virtue to be slandered in my hearing."

There was a dead pause. Leicester stood displeased, yet undetermined, and too conscious of the weakness of his cause; while Varney, with a deep and hypocritical affectation of sorrow, mingled with humility, bent his eyes on the ground.

It was then that the Countess Amy displayed, in the midst of distress and difficulty, the natural energy of character, which would have rendered her, had fate allowed, a distinguished ornament of the rank which she held.

She walked up to Leicester with a composed step, a dignified air, and looks in which strong affection essayed in vain to shake the firmness of conscious truth and rectitude of principle. "You have spoken your mind, my lord," she said, "in these difficulties with which, unhappily, I have found myself unable to comply. This gentleman this person I should say - has hinted at another. scheme, to which I object not, but as it displeases you. Will your lordship be pleased to hear what a young and timid woman, but your most affectionate wife, can suggest in the present extremity?"