"No, my lord," said Varney firmly, "but be master of yourself, and of
your own passion. My lord, I, your born servant, am ashamed to see how
poorly you bear yourself in the storm of fury. Go to Elizabeth's
feet, confess your marriage--impeach your wife and her paramour of
adultery--and avow yourself, amongst all your peers, the wittol who
married a country girl, and was cozened by her and her book-learned
gallant. Go, my lord--but first take farewell of Richard Varney, with
all the benefits you ever conferred on him. He served the noble, the
lofty, the high-minded Leicester, and was more proud of depending on him
than he would be of commanding thousands. But the abject lord who stoops
to every adverse circumstance, whose judicious resolves are scattered
like chaff before every wind of passion, him Richard Varney serves not.
He is as much above him in constancy of mind as beneath him in rank and
fortune."
Varney spoke thus without hypocrisy, for though the firmness of mind
which he boasted was hardness and impenetrability, yet he really felt
the ascendency which he vaunted; while the interest which he actually
felt in the fortunes of Leicester gave unusual emotion to his voice and
manner.
Leicester was overpowered by his assumed superiority it seemed to the
unfortunate Earl as if his last friend was about to abandon him. He
stretched his hand towards Varney as he uttered the words, "Do not leave
me. What wouldst thou have me do?"
"Be thyself, my noble master," said Varney, touching the Earl's hand
with his lips, after having respectfully grasped it in his own; "be
yourself, superior to those storms of passion which wreck inferior
minds. Are you the first who has been cozened in love--the first whom a
vain and licentious woman has cheated into an affection, which she
has afterwards scorned and misused? And will you suffer yourself to be
driven frantic because you have not been wiser than the wisest men whom
the world has seen? Let her be as if she had not been--let her pass from
your memory, as unworthy of ever having held a place there. Let your
strong resolve of this morning, which I have both courage, zeal,
and means enough to execute, be like the fiat of a superior being, a
passionless act of justice. She hath deserved death--let her die!"
While he was speaking, the Earl held his hand fast, compressed his lips
hard, and frowned, as if he laboured to catch from Varney a portion of
the cold, ruthless, and dispassionate firmness which he recommended.
When he was silent, the Earl still continued to rasp his hand, until,
with an effort at calm decision, he was able to articulate, "Be it
so--she dies! But one tear might be permitted."