d of
him by his master. The name of Leicester's wife was Amy Robesart.

In a short time news came to London that the unhappy woman was killed by
a fall down stairs! The instantaneous suspicion darted at once into
every one's mind that she had been murdered. Rumors circulated all
around the place where the death had occurred that she had been
murdered. A conscientious clergyman of the neighborhood sent an account
of the case to London, to the queen's ministers, stating the facts, and
urging the queen to order an investigation of the affair, but nothing
was ever done. It has accordingly been the general belief of mankind
since that time, that the unprincipled courtier destroyed his wife in
the vain hope of becoming afterward the husband of the queen.

The people of England were greatly incensed at this transaction. They
had hated Leicester before, and they hated him now more inveterately
still. Favorites are very generally hated; royal favorites always. He,
however, grew more and more intimate with the queen, and every body
feared that he was going to be her husband. Their conduct was watched
very closely by all the great world, and, as is usual in such cases, a
thousand circumstances and occurrences were reported busily from tongue
to tongue, which the actors in them doubtless supposed passed unobserved
or were forgotten.

One night, for instance, Queen Elizabeth, having supped with Dudley, was
going home in her chair, lighted by torch-bearers. At the present day,
all London is lighted brilliantly at midnight with gas, and ladies go
home from their convivial and pleasure assemblies in luxurious
carriages, in which they are rocked gently along through broad and
magnificent avenues, as bright, almost, as day. Then, however, it was
very different. The lady was borne slowly along through narrow, and
dingy, and dangerous streets, with a train of torches before and behind
her, dispelling the darkness a moment with their glare, and then leaving
it more deep and somber than ever. On the night of which we are
speaking, Elizabeth, feeling in good humor, began to talk with some of
the torch-bearers on the way. They were Dudley's men, and Elizabeth
began to praise their master. She said to one of them, among other
things, that she was going to raise him to a higher position than any of
his name had ever borne before. Now, as Dudley's father was a duke,
which title denotes the highest rank of the English nobility, the man
inferred