Some time elapsed while the play shifted to the court, recounting the feuds of Leicester and Sussex, and when Amy Robsart appeared again it was in the stormy interview where Varney endeavours to enforce the earl’s command that she shall journey to Kenilworth as Varney’s wife.  The trembling submissiveness of earlier scenes was thrown away for ever, and, as if metamorphosed into a Fury, she rose, towered above him, every feature quivering with hatred, scorn, and defiance.

“Look at him, Janet! 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, shoe-cleaning fellow,—­him there, my lord’s lackey, for my liege lord and husband!  I would I were a man but for five minutes!—­but go! begone!”

She paused panting, then threw back her haughty head, rose on tiptoe, and, shaking her hand in prophetic wrath and deathless defiance, almost hissed into the box beneath which Varney stood: 

“Go, tell thy master that when I, like him, can forget my plighted troth, turn craven, bury honour, and forswear my marriage vows, then, oh then!  I promise him, I will give him a rival, something worthy of the name!”

Was the avenging lash of conscience uncoiled at last in Cuthbert Laurance’s hardened soul that the blood so suddenly ebbed from his lips, and he drew his breath like one overshadowed by a vampire?  Only once had he caught the full gleam of her indignant eyes, but that long look had awakened torture’s that would never entirely slumber again, until the solemn hush of the shroud and the cemetery was his portion.  No suspicion of the truth crossed his mind, even for an instant,—­for what resemblance could be traced between that regal woman, and the shy, awkward, dark-haired little rustic, who thirteen years before had frolicked like a spaniel about him,—­loving but lowly?

In vain he sought to arrest her attention; the actress had only once looked at the group, and it was not until the close that he succeeded in catching her glance.

After her escape from Varney, Amy Robsart reached in disguise the confines of Kenilworth, and standing there, travel-worn, weary, dejected, in sight of the princely castle, with its stately towers and battlements, she first saw the home whose shelter was denied her, the palatial home where Leicester bowed in homage before Elizabeth.  As a neglected, repudiated wife, creeping stealthily to the hearth where it was her right to reign, Amy turned her wan, woeful face to the audience, and, fixing her gaze with strange mournful intentness upon the eyes that watched her from the box, she seemed to throw her whole soul into the finest passage of the play.

“I have given him all that woman has to give.  Name and fame, heart and hand, have I given the lord of all this magnificence—­at the altar, and England’s Queen could give him no more.  He is my husband; I am his wife.  I will be bold in claiming my right; even the bolder, that I come thus unexpected and forlorn.  Whom God hath joined, man cannot sunder.”