would willingly have made me his constant companion. There was a
time, however, at which I felt the kind knight's excessive love for
field-sports detained me from studies, by which I might have profited
more; but I ceased to regret the leisure which gratitude and hereditary
friendship compelled me to bestow on these rural avocations. The
exquisite beauty of Mistress Amy Robsart, as she grew up from childhood
to woman, could not escape one whom circumstances obliged to be so
constantly in her company--I loved her, in short, mine host, and her
father saw it."

"And crossed your true loves, no doubt?" said mine host. "It is the way
in all such cases; and I judge it must have been so in your instance,
from the heavy sigh you uttered even now."

"The case was different, mine host. My suit was highly approved by
the generous Sir Hugh Robsart; it was his daughter who was cold to my
passion."

"She was the more dangerous enemy of the two," said the innkeeper. "I
fear me your suit proved a cold one."

"She yielded me her esteem," said Tressilian, "and seemed not unwilling
that I should hope it might ripen into a warmer passion. There was
a contract of future marriage executed betwixt us, upon her father's
intercession; but to comply with her anxious request, the execution was
deferred for a twelvemonth. During this period, Richard Varney appeared
in the country, and, availing himself of some distant family connection
with Sir Hugh Robsart, spent much of his time in his company, until, at
length, he almost lived in the family."

"That could bode no good to the place he honoured with his residence,"
said Gosling.

"No, by the rood!" replied Tressilian. "Misunderstanding and misery
followed his presence, yet so strangely that I am at this moment at a
loss to trace the gradations of their encroachment upon a family which
had, till then, been so happy. For a time Amy Robsart received the
attentions of this man Varney with the indifference attached to common
courtesies; then followed a period in which she seemed to regard him
with dislike, and even with disgust; and then an extraordinary species
of connection appeared to grow up betwixt them. Varney dropped those
airs of pretension and gallantry which had marked his former approaches;
and Amy, on the other hand, seemed to renounce the ill-disguised disgust
with which she had regarded them. They seemed to have more of privacy
and confidence together than I fully liked, and I sus