“Only the great duty I owe your Highness could ever make me say,” replied Cecil, falteringly. “In obedience to your Grace’s orders, I followed him to the Park; and there, in a retired spot, I beheld him in earnest converse with a lady.”
“Aha!” muttered Elizabeth. “By my father’s hand, he shall answer for ’t! Wait thee here a space!”
With this injunction, she turned away, and fell back to the Earl of Essex.
“Essex, give thee a good night!” she said, extending him her hand.
The young Earl, with the eagerness of a lover, caught up her proffered hand, and, dropping on one knee, raised it respectfully to his lips. As he did so, his graceful bearing, and manly and handsome countenance, beaming with expression, appeared to new advantage, and presented additional charms. While she glanced hastily over him, Elizabeth, though in no tender mood, deigned to smile; but, whatever were her feelings, she broke away directly.
“Ho, there!” she cried to her ladies; “we will away!”
The bevy of beauties gathered round her in a moment; the hall-door, leading to the private apartments of the palace, was thrown open; and, attended by her train, the Queen passed to her chamber.
Her retirement was the signal for the whole court to take their departure. Essex and Cecil, however, though with no common object, remained behind, and manifested no intention of immediately retiring.
Though the Queen had passed out of sight, and the door by which she had made her egress, in the manner and order described, was now closed, the eyes of Essex were still turned in the direction she had taken, and seemed to look for or behold her in the unbroken vacuity. But he did not gaze thus for any protracted period. After a short interval, he dropped his gaze, and turned to retire. He was stepping forward with this view, when, raising his eyes again, he encountered those of Sir Robert Cecil. That person, with whatever motive, had been watching him from the first, and now looked him straight in the face. But the familiarity which he seemed to assume, and which was marked very strikingly in his penetrating gaze, drew from the proud Earl no apparent response; for, instead of pausing, he dropped his glance on the instant, and passed straight on.