"By all means, my dear fellow." Warner almost laughed aloud as he wheeled about and took up a quill. He had no jealousy of Hunsdon, knew that he would never win Anne Percy; but the irony of inditing a sonnet to her in the name of another man took away his breath.
He wrote steadily for an hour, copying and polishing, for he was too great an artist to send forth even an anonymous trifle incomplete in finish. Lord Hunsdon, who was a young man of excellent parts, took from the table a copy of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, and read diligently until Warner crossed the room and handed him the sonnet.
Hunsdon was enraptured, but Warner refused to be thanked.
"It would be an odd circumstance," he said dryly, "if I could not do that much for you."
Hunsdon blushed furiously. "Only one thing more could make me the happiest of men," he cried, with that kindling of the eye that in other conditions would have developed into a steady fanaticism. "And when all is well, you must come and live with us. Now that the world has found you once more I feel that I above all should be held to account did you despise and forget it again. I shall not even leave you behind when I return to England. Now, I must run off and copy this. Remember, you dine with us to-night."