"Pshaw!" exclaimed Overbury, impatiently, "can she place you on the steps of the throne? For heaven's sake, Rochester, take care," he added, almost prophetically, "that some sweet mischief, such as this, does not cast you down from where you already stand!"
"Oh, most grave and reverend youth," replied Rochester, laughing, "be not afraid of my virtue. I will be as demure as a maid; and, though I cannot promise thee to look at bright eyes without admiration, I'll strangle the naughty sighs between my teeth, so that they reach not fair Arabella's ears--I will now take the paper to the King, and leave him not till I have got a warrant for the money. Then think with what grace I will put it into her own soft hand, and say that I have brought it to her, because I know it is her delight to make her fellow-creatures happy.--I hope the hint is not too broad, companion, that I look to her to make me happy too?"
"Seriously, seriously, Rochester, I pray you," said Sir Thomas Overbury, "remember, this is no jesting matter, but one on which your future fate depends."
"Grave as a judge will I be," replied Rochester, "in all the active part of the drama; but the performers may laugh behind the scenes, good Overbury. But I will away to the King. There we shall laugh enough, I trow."
"Not with that in your hand," answered Overbury.
"Why, it may cause a storm at first," rejoined the favourite; "but if I find the dear pedagogue is very poor, I will lend his Majesty the money. Then he will call me a fule, and the farmer a gowk; and the business will end in laughter, however it may begin."
Thus saying, he left his friend in the cabinet, giving him a gay nod as he went out. But Overbury could not be cheerful: there was a heaviness in his heart which he could not account for, which some might think was a presentiment of coming evil; but it was only the load of manifold cares and ever-frowning anxieties, which try the muscles of ambition in its upward course.
[CHAPTER XX.]
Who has not heard of the masque at Theobalds--perhaps the most disgraceful scene that ever took place in an English court? and yet it is into the midst of that extraordinary spectacle of disgusting excess that we must lead the reader for a short time, together with some of the fairest and the best of the personages in our tale.
Not long after those conversations took place which we have in the last chapter detailed, the King, the Queen, and the whole Court were invited to spend a few days at the princely mansion of the Earl of Salisbury, to revel with the King of Denmark, who was then visiting England, and had just returned to the capital from a short tour through some of our rural districts.