“Madam, and most gracious Princess,” said Leicester, “you, who can pardon so many weaknesses which your own heart never knows, can best bestow your commiseration on the agitations of the bosom, which, for a moment, affect both head and limbs.  I came to your presence a doubting and an accused subject; your goodness penetrated the clouds of defamation, and restored me to my honour, and, what is yet dearer, to your favour—­is it wonderful, though for me it is most unhappy, that my master of the horse should have found me in a state which scarce permitted me to make the exertion necessary to follow him to this place, when one glance of your Highness, although, alas! an angry one, has had power to do that for me in which Esculapius might have failed?”

“How is this?” said Elizabeth hastily, looking at Varney; “hath your lord been ill?”

“Something of a fainting fit,” answered the ready-witted Varney, “as your Grace may observe from his present condition.  My lord’s haste would not permit me leisure even to bring his dress into order.”

“It matters not,” said Elizabeth, as she gazed on the noble face and form of Leicester, to which even the strange mixture of passions by which he had been so lately agitated gave additional interest; “make room for my noble lord.  Your place, Master Varney, has been filled up; you must find a seat in another barge.”

Varney bowed, and withdrew.

“And you, too, our young Squire of the Cloak,” added she, looking at Raleigh, “must, for the time, go to the barge of our ladies of honour.  As for Tressilian, he hath already suffered too much by the caprice of women that I should aggrieve him by my change of plan, so far as he is concerned.”

Leicester seated himself in his place in the barge, and close to the Sovereign.  Raleigh rose to retire, and Tressilian would have been so ill-timed in his courtesy as to offer to relinquish his own place to his friend, had not the acute glance of Raleigh himself, who seemed no in his native element, made him sensible that so ready a disclamation of the royal favour might be misinterpreted.  He sat silent, therefore, whilst Raleigh, with a profound bow, and a look of the deepest humiliation, was about to quit his place.

A noble courtier, the gallant Lord Willoughby, read, as he thought, something in the Queen’s face which seemed to pity Raleigh’s real or assumed semblance of mortification.

“It is not for us old courtiers,” he said, “to hide the sunshine from the young ones.  I will, with her Majesty’s leave, relinquish for an hour that which her subjects hold dearest, the delight of her Highness’s presence, and mortify myself by walking in starlight, while I forsake for a brief season the glory of Diana’s own beams.  I will take place in the boat which the ladies occupy, and permit this young cavalier his hour of promised felicity.”