"It is," said the physician. "But if you would have me serve you well, and to some purpose, you must tell me all. Give me no half-confidence. Let me know everything and then if I can do you good I will; if not, your counsel shall not be betrayed, my lord, I suppose I must say."
"You had better tell him all your history, my dear Osborne," said Dr. Wilbraham. "He can, and I am sure will, for my sake, serve you well."
"My dear Osborne!" echoed the physician. "Then I have it! You are my Lord Darnley, my good uncle's first pupil. Your history, my lord, you need not tell me: that I know. But tell me your plans, and I will serve you heart and hand, to the best of my power."
The plans of the young knight need not be again detailed here. Suffice it that he laid them all open to the worthy physician, who, however, shook his head. "It's a mad scheme!" said he, in his abrupt manner. "His grace, though right royal, bountiful, and just, is often as capricious as a young madam in the honeymoon. However, if Buckingham, Abergany, Surrey, and such wise and noble men judge well of it, I cannot say against it. A straw, 'tis true, will balance it one way or t'other. However, give me to-day to think, and I will find some way of bringing you to the king, so as to gain his good-will at first. And now I will go to see Lady Constance de Grey."
"We will go along, good doctor!" exclaimed the tutor; "for I must be back to speak with her, and Osborne must render her a visit to thank her for her good wishes and endeavours in his behalf. She will be so charmed to see him free and unhurt that 'twill make her well again."
"Will it?" said the doctor, drily. "Well, you shall give her that medicine after I have ordered her mine. But let me have my turn first. I ask but a quarter of an hour, then come both of you; and in the mean time, my good learned uncle, study that beautiful amphora, and tell me, if you can, why the ancient Greeks placed always on their tombs an empty urn. Was it an emblem of the body, from within which the spirit was departed, like the wine from the void amphora, leaving but the vessel of clay to return to its native earth? Think of it till we meet."
Thus saying, the learned physician left them, to proceed on his visit to Lady Constance de Grey.
CHAPTER XV.
Though heaven's inauspicious eye
Lay black on love's nativity,
Her eye a strong appeal shall give;
Beauty smiles, and love shall live.--Crashaw.
When Dr. Butts had left them, the knight would fain have excused himself from accompanying his old tutor on the proposed visit. He had encountered many a danger in the "imminent deadly breach," and the battle-field, with as light a heart as that which beats in beauty's bosom when she thinks of sunning herself in admiring looks at the next ball; but now his courage failed him at the thought of meeting the person he loved best, and so much did his spirit quail, that "you might have brained him with a lady's fan."