and nobles who prest toward
her under the idea that she was taken suddenly ill.--"Where is my Lord
of Leicester?" she said, in a tone, that thrilled with astonishment
all the courtiers who stood around.--"Stand forth, my Lord of
Leicester!"

If, in the midst of the most serene day of summer, when all is light
and laughing around, a thunderbolt were to fall from the clear blue
vault of heaven and rend the earth at the very feet of some careless
traveler, he could not gaze upon the smoldering chasm which so
unexpectedly yawned before him, with half the astonishment and fear
which Leicester felt at the sight that so suddenly presented itself.
He had that instant been receiving, with a political affectation of
disavowing and misunderstanding their meaning, the half uttered, half
intimated congratulations of the courtiers upon the favor of the Queen
carried apparently to its highest pitch during the interview of that
morning; from which most of them seemed to augur that he might soon
arise from their equal in rank to become their master. And now, while
the subdued yet proud smile with which he disclaimed those inferences
was yet curling his cheek, the Queen shot into the circle, her
passions excited to the uttermost; and supporting with one hand, and
apparently without an effort, the pale and sinking form of his almost
expiring wife, and pointing with the finger of the other to her
half-dead features, demanded in a voice that sounded to the ear of the
astounded statesman like the last dread trumpet-all that is to summon
body and spirit to the judgment-seat, "Knowest thou this woman?"

As, at the blast of that last trumpet, the guilty shall call upon the
mountains to cover them, Leicester's inward thoughts invoked the
stately arch which he had built in his pride, to burst its strong
conjunction and overwhelm them in its ruins. But the cemented stones,
architrave and battlement, stood fast; and it was the proud master
himself, who, as if some actual pressure had bent him to the earth,
kneeled down before Elizabeth, and prostrated his brow to the marble
flagstones on which she stood.

"Leicester," said Elizabeth, in a voice which trembled with passion,
"could I think thou hast practised on me--on me thy sovereign--on me
thy confiding, thy too partial mistress, the base and ungrateful
deception which thy present confusion surmises--by all that is holy,
false lord, that head of thine were in as great peril as ever was thy
fat