Leicester moved hastily on, neglecting the courtesies he had hitherto dispensed so liberally, and hurrying through the courtly crowd, until he paused in a small withdrawing-room, into which he plunged to draw a moment’s breath unobserved, and in seclusion.

“What am I now,” he said to himself, “that am thus jaded by the words of a mean, weather-beaten, goose-brained gull!  Conscience, thou art a bloodhound, whose growl wakes us readily at the paltry stir of a rat or mouse as at the step of a lion.  Can I not quit myself, by one bold stroke, of a state so irksome, so unhonoured?  What if I kneel to Elizabeth, and, owning the whole, throw myself on her mercy?”

As he pursued this train of thought, the door of the apartment opened, and Varney rushed in.

“Thank God, my lord, that I have found you!” was his exclamation.

“Thank the devil, whose agent thou art,” was the Earl’s reply.

“Thank whom you will, my lord,” replied Varney; “but hasten to the water-side.  The Queen is on board, and asks for you.”

“Go, say I am taken suddenly ill,” replied Leicester; “for, by Heaven, my brain can sustain this no longer!”

“I may well say so,” said Varney, with bitterness of expression, “for your place, ay, and mine, who, as your master of the horse, was to have attended your lordship, is already filled up in the Queen’s barge.  The new minion, Walter Raleigh, and our old acquaintance Tressilian were called for to fill our places just as I hastened away to seek you.”

“Thou art a devil, Varney,” said Leicester hastily; “but thou hast the mastery for the present—­I follow thee.”

Varney replied not, but led the way out of the palace, and towards the river, while his master followed him, as if mechanically; until, looking back, he said in a tone which savoured of familiarity at least, if not of authority, “How is this, my lord?  Your cloak hangs on one side—­your hose are unbraced—­permit me—­”

“Thou art a fool, Varney, as well as a knave,” said Leicester, shaking him off, and rejecting his officious assistance.  “We are best thus, sir; when we require you to order our person, it is well, but now we want you not.”

So saying, the Earl resumed at once his air of command, and with it his self-possession—­shook his dress into yet wilder disorder—­passed before Varney with the air of a superior and master, and in his turn led the way to the river-side.

The Queen’s barge was on the very point of putting off, the seat allotted to Leicester in the stern, and that to his master of the horse on the bow of the boat, being already filled up.  But on Leicester’s approach there was a pause, as if the bargemen anticipated some alteration in their company.  The angry spot was, however, on the Queen’s cheek, as, in that cold tone with which superiors endeavour to veil their internal agitation, while speaking to those before whom it would be derogation to express it, she pronounced the chilling words, “We have waited, my Lord of Leicester.”