With Elizabeth, Leicester played his game as one to whom her natural
strength of talent and her weakness in one or two particular points were
well known. He was too wary to exchange on a sudden the sullen personage
which he had played before he retired with Varney; but on approaching
her it seemed softened into a melancholy, which had a touch of
tenderness in it, and which, in the course of conversing with Elizabeth,
and as she dropped in compassion one mark of favour after another to
console him, passed into a flow of affectionate gallantry, the most
assiduous, the most delicate, the most insinuating, yet at the same time
the most respectful, with which a Queen was ever addressed by a subject.
Elizabeth listened as in a sort of enchantment. Her jealousy of power
was lulled asleep; her resolution to forsake all social or domestic
ties, and dedicate herself exclusively to the care of her people, began
to be shaken; and once more the star of Dudley culminated in the court
horizon.
But Leicester did not enjoy this triumph over nature, and over
conscience, without its being embittered to him, not only by the
internal rebellion of his feelings against the violence which he
exercised over them, but by many accidental circumstances, which, in
the course of the banquet, and during the subsequent amusements of the
evening, jarred upon that nerve, the least vibration of which was agony.
The courtiers were, for example, in the Great Hall, after having left
the banqueting-room, awaiting the appearance of a splendid masque,
which was the expected entertainment of this evening, when the Queen
interrupted a wild career of wit which the Earl of Leicester was running
against Lord Willoughby, Raleigh, and some other courtiers, by saying,
"We will impeach you of high treason, my lord, if you proceed in this
attempt to slay us with laughter. And here comes a thing may make us all
grave at his pleasure, our learned physician Masters, with news belike
of our poor suppliant, Lady Varney;--nay, my lord, we will not have you
leave us, for this being a dispute betwixt married persons, we do not
hold our own experience deep enough to decide thereon without good
counsel.--How now, Masters, what thinkest thou of the runaway bride?"
The smile with which Leicester had been speaking, when the Queen
interrupted him, remained arrested on his lips, as if it had been carved
there by the chisel of Michael Angelo or of Chantrey; and he listened to
the speech of the physician with the same immovable cast of countenance.
"The Lady Varney, gracious Sovereign," said the court physician Masters,
"is sullen, and would hold little conference with me touching the state
of her health, talking wildly of being soon to plead her own cause
before your own presence, and of answering no meaner person's
inquiries."