"But what says your dear good friend, Sir Thomas Overbury?" asked Lady Essex. "My mother is right, Rochester: we want Malmsey butt!"
"It were not safe," answered her lover, looking down; "the man may drive me to punish him as he deserves; but how, is the question?"
"Oh, by a thousand means," answered the Countess.
"But what does he say, what does he say, Robert? let me see. Have you got the letter with you?"
"Yes, here it is," answered Rochester; "a sweet composition, in truth, and one which shows that he and I are henceforth sworn enemies. One or the other must perish, that is clear."
"Let it be him, sweet Rochester, let it be him," said the Countess, taking the letter, and running her eye over the contents.
"What says the villain?" she exclaimed, at length, with her face burning as she read aloud some portions of Overbury's letter. "--'You and I will come to public trial before all the friends I have?--They shall know what words have passed betwixt us heretofore?--I have wrote the story betwixt you and me from the first hour to this day!'--Rochester, there is no time to be lost! He brings it on his own head.--Let him take the consequences."
"But how? but how?" cried Rochester.
"How?" asked the Countess. "Is he not in the Tower?--Is not my father Lord High Chamberlain?--Are you not a Privy Councillor?--Will the King refuse you anything you ask in reason?--Rochester, Rochester! means are not difficult if you will be firm. But place a secure man as Lieutenant of the Tower, and leave the rest to me. What! would you have yourself overthrown by a worm--by a viper?--Will you leave a snake to sting you, when, by one stroke of your heel, you can tread it into nothing? You have done all you have done, more than could be expected, to avoid the necessity he forces on you. You offered him rank, station, and high employment! He refused them all, and his own obstinacy sent him to the Tower. Now he would charge and calumniate you, knowing right well, that slander always leaves part of its venom behind, whatever antidote we apply. He gives you no choice, he forces you to declare that he or you must perish."
"It is but too true," replied Rochester, gazing on the ground somewhat gloomily; "and yet I would to Heaven he did not force me to deal with him harshly."