"Why, what are you about, Tom?" cried Rochester, entering, and casting his well-dressed and graceful limbs into a chair. "I expected to find you capering about the room, in joy at some gracious favour bestowed upon you by his Majesty."
"Oh, no!" answered Overbury. "I am a grave and serious man, my Lord; and, as to what I am about, I am writing to his most gracious Majesty, to thank him for the honour conferred upon me, but begging to decline it."
"Decline it?" exclaimed Rochester, with every appearance of surprise and consternation: "pause and think a moment, Overbury. What, in the name of fortune, can the king have offered, that any of his subjects should dare to decline?"
"Nay, my lord, you know right well," replied Sir Thomas Overbury, "that this is a thing I cannot accept."
"Really," replied Rochester, "the king has not told me what he was going to offer you."
The reader already knows that this was false, but will not be surprised that in this case, as in all others, one vice brought on a second, or that lying should be consequent upon treachery.
Overbury gazed in his face for a single instant, and then replied, "I am happy to hear it, my good lord; for the man who counselled this did no friendly act to one who has ever striven to serve you."
"'Tis most likely the king's own act," replied Rochester. "You know how often he determines on such things himself. But what is it, Overbury? It cannot be so bad as you seem to think."
"As bad as may be, my good lord," answered the knight; "it is a sentence of banishment--ay, and worse than the banishment of any ordinary criminal. He who conspires against the good of the state, and is yet cunning enough, as so many are, to go within an inch of treason, yet not overstep the iron limit of the law, is exiled reasonably to other lands, that his turbulence may no more disturb the peace of England. But the whole world is left him to choose where he will make his refuge. He may suit his whim, his tastes, or his complexion, as best suits him; he may range from the damp pools of Holland and the misty Rhine, to the far boundaries of Italy; may cross the Adriatic or the Hellespont, and become pilgrim to the Sepulchre. He is as free as the air to sweep over the whole world, except this island, and may make himself a country where he pleases. But in my case, I am shackled and tied down; my place of banishment is fixed in the most sickly and unfriendly region of the earth, among cold barbarians, unlettered, rough, and fierce, and all for the crime of----"
"Of what?" asked Rochester, seeing him pause.