Leicester, having received this permission, retired accordingly, and was followed by those nobles who had attended the Queen to Kenilworth in person.  The gentlemen who had preceded them, and were, of course, dressed for the solemnity, remained in attendance.  But being most of them of rather inferior rank, they remained at an awful distance from the throne which Elizabeth occupied.  The Queen’s sharp eye soon distinguished Raleigh amongst them, with one or two others who were personally known to her, and she instantly made them a sign to approach, and accosted them very graciously.  Raleigh, in particular, the adventure of whose cloak, as well as the incident of the verses, remained on her mind, was very graciously received; and to him she most frequently applied for information concerning the names and rank of those who were in presence.  These he communicated concisely, and not without some traits of humorous satire, by which Elizabeth seemed much amused.  “And who is yonder clownish fellow?” she said, looking at Tressilian, whose soiled dress on this occasion greatly obscured his good mien.

“A poet, if it please your Grace,” replied Raleigh.

“I might have guessed that from his careless garb,” said Elizabeth.  “I have known some poets so thoughtless as to throw their cloaks into gutters.”

“It must have been when the sun dazzled both their eyes and their judgment,” answered Raleigh.

Elizabeth smiled, and proceeded, “I asked that slovenly fellow’s name, and you only told me his profession.”

“Tressilian is his name,” said Raleigh, with internal reluctance, for he foresaw nothing favourable to his friend from the manner in which she took notice of him.

“Tressilian!” answered Elizabeth.  “Oh, the Menelaus of our romance.  Why, he has dressed himself in a guise that will go far to exculpate his fair and false Helen.  And where is Farnham, or whatever his name is—­my Lord of Leicester’s man, I mean—­the Paris of this Devonshire tale?”

With still greater reluctance Raleigh named and pointed out to her Varney, for whom the tailor had done all that art could perform in making his exterior agreeable; and who, if he had not grace, had a sort of tact and habitual knowledge of breeding, which came in place of it.

The Queen turned her eyes from the one to the other.  “I doubt,” she said, “this same poetical Master Tressilian, who is too learned, I warrant me, to remember whose presence he was to appear in, may be one of those of whom Geoffrey Chaucer says wittily, the wisest clerks are not the wisest men.  I remember that Varney is a smooth-tongued varlet.  I doubt this fair runaway hath had reasons for breaking her faith.”

To this Raleigh durst make no answer, aware how little he should benefit Tressilian by contradicting the Queen’s sentiments, and not at all certain, on the whole, whether the best thing that could befall him would not be that she should put an end at once by her authority to this affair, upon which it seemed to him Tressilian’s thoughts were fixed with unavailing and distressing pertinacity.  As these reflections passed through his active brain, the lower door of the hall opened, and Leicester, accompanied by several of his kinsmen, and of the nobles who had embraced his faction, re-entered the Castle Hall.