Varney bowed, and withdrew.
"And you, too, our young Squire of the Cloak," added she, looking at
Raleigh, "must, for the time, go to the barge of our ladies of honour.
As for Tressilian, he hath already suffered too much by the caprice of
women that I should aggrieve him by my change of plan, so far as he is
concerned."
Leicester seated himself in his place in the barge, and close to the
Sovereign. Raleigh rose to retire, and Tressilian would have been so
ill-timed in his courtesy as to offer to relinquish his own place to his
friend, had not the acute glance of Raleigh himself, who seemed no in
his native element, made him sensible that so ready a disclamation of
the royal favour might be misinterpreted. He sat silent, therefore,
whilst Raleigh, with a profound bow, and a look of the deepest
humiliation, was about to quit his place.
A noble courtier, the gallant Lord Willoughby, read, as he thought,
something in the Queen's face which seemed to pity Raleigh's real or
assumed semblance of mortification.
"It is not for us old courtiers," he said, "to hide the sunshine from
the young ones. I will, with her Majesty's leave, relinquish for an
hour that which her subjects hold dearest, the delight of her Highness's
presence, and mortify myself by walking in starlight, while I forsake
for a brief season the glory of Diana's own beams. I will take place
in the boat which the ladies occupy, and permit this young cavalier his
hour of promised felicity."
The Queen replied, with an expression betwixt mirth and earnest, "If you
are so willing to leave us, my lord, we cannot help the mortification.
But, under favour, we do not trust you--old and experienced as you
may deem yourself--with the care of our young ladies of honour. Your
venerable age, my lord," she continued, smiling, "may be better assorted
with that of my Lord Treasurer, who follows in the third boat, and by
whose experience even my Lord Willoughby's may be improved."
Lord Willoughby hid his disappointment under a smile--laughed, was
confused, bowed, and left the Queen's barge to go on board my Lord
Burleigh's. Leicester, who endeavoured to divert his thoughts from all
internal reflection, by fixing them on what was passing around, watched
this circumstance among others. But when the boat put off from the
shore--when the music sounded from a barge which accompanied them--when
the shouts of the populace were heard from the shore, and all reminded
him of the situation in which he was placed, he abstracted his thoughts
and feelings by a strong effort from everything but the necessity of
maintaining himself in the favour of his patroness, and exerted his
talents of pleasing captivation with such success, that the Queen,
alternately delighted with his conversation, and alarmed for his health,
at length imposed a temporary silence on him, with playful yet anxious
care, lest his flow of spirits should exhaust him.