Kenilworth - Page 304/408

With great difficulty, and only by the most patient and mild

remonstrances with Blount, he escaped the disgrace and mortification of

having two of Sussex's stoutest yeomen quartered in his apartment.

At last, however, when Nicholas had seen him fairly deposited in his

truckle-bed, and had bestowed one or two hearty kicks, and as hearty

curses, on the boots, which, in his lately acquired spirit of foppery,

he considered as a strong symptom, if not the cause, of his friend's

malady, he contented himself with the modified measure of locking the

door on the unfortunate Tressilian, whose gallant and disinterested

efforts to save a female who had treated him with ingratitude thus

terminated for the present in the displeasure of his Sovereign and the

conviction of his friends that he was little better than a madman.