hty 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."

The irresistible pathos of look and tone electrified that wide
assemblage, and in the midst of such plaudits as only Paris bestows
she allowed her eyes to wander almost dreamily over the surging sea
of human heads, and as if she were in