deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had
the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the "country squire."

No wonder it was commonly rumoured either that she was actually Dudley's
wife or that her relations with him were open to grave suspicion. "I am
spoken of," she once bitterly said to the Spanish Ambassador, "as if I
were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him
because of his excellent disposition and his many merits. But I am
young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered. God knows,
they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world knows
it also. I do not live in a corner; a thousand eyes see all I do, and
calumny will not fasten on me for ever."

But neither Elizabeth nor Dudley (or Leicester, as we must now call him)
allowed these rumours and suspicions to affect even their familiarities,
which were proclaimed to all on many a public occasion; as when the Earl
once, during a heated game of tennis, snatched the Queen's handkerchief
from her hand and proceeded to wipe his perspiring forehead with it.

To Elizabeth's passion for pomp and pageantry Leicester was
indispensable. It was he who arranged to the smallest detail her
gorgeous progresses and receptions, culminating in that historic visit
to Kenilworth in 1575, every hour of which was crowded with
cunningly-devised entertainments--from the splendid pageantry of her
welcome, through banquets and masquerades, to hunting and
bear-baiting--all on a scale of lavish prodigality such as even that
most gorgeous of Queens had never known.

Thus for thirty long years Leicester held his paramount place in the
affections of his Sovereign--a pre-eminence which was never seriously
endangered even when he seemed most disloyal, and transferred to other
women attentions of which she claimed a monopoly. When he flirted
outrageously with my Lady Hereford, one of the loveliest women at Court,
she responded by coquetting openly with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord
Ormonde, or Sir Thomas Heneage; and only laughed at the jealousy she
aroused. "If a man may flirt," she would mockingly say, "why not a
woman, especially when that woman is a Queen?" And, of course, to this
question there was no other answer for my lord than to "kiss and be
friends," and to promise to be more discreet in the future.

But the Earl was ever weak in the presence of beauty; and in spite of
all his vows could not long be true even to hi