"Your story, Clara," said Lady Leicester, at length breaking silence, "convinces me this generous man carries with him the remembrance of some early grief—some secret sorrow never to be expressed. I feel as firmly convinced of it, as that you yourself are the excited cause of those sonnets I have just perused. The time of their production and circulation amongst us by Essex and Southampton—the circumstances under which you was rescued by this Shakespeare from the Spaniard—his discovery of your true sex, and subsequent contemplation of your exquisite disposition, Clara, all confirm it. Heaven grant thou sweetest and best of women, that this poetic friend does not himself love, and whilst he has pleaded for license to inform his friend Arderne of your secret, has not indeed felt a pang sharp as the stilleto of the Italian."
Clara started at the words of the Countess, and a slight flush suffused her check. The thought was, for the moment, fraught with pleasant reminiscences, but then feelings of alarm pervaded her, lest there should be in reality some truth in the suspicion of her friend. That man, so immeasurably above all other mortals, to love her—that man, whose influence seemed always to pervade every spot around her, where aught noble, refined, or chivalrous breathed—that man, without whose society, even granting she were wedded to him she loved, she must now experience a void, a blank. For be it remembered that Clara de Mowbray had, from circumstances, been the intimate, the companion of Shakespeare, knew his sentiments, been with him in the hour when poetry flowed from lip as well as pen; and that whilst she had listened, his words had produced thoughts and imaginings belonging to the fabled ages of the early world, in Crete, in Sparta, and in Thessaly.
As the Countess remarked the effect her words had produced, she arose and walked to the window. How sad, she thought to herself, that the life of one so amiable should be an aimless one! How sad, that sorrow should inhabit that form where so much grace and beauty dwelt!
Her thoughts, however, were speedily withdrawn from her friend, for at that moment the Major Domo, or steward of the Castle, his white wand in his hand, announced the arrival of a messenger from London bearing dispatches.
"News," she said, as she took the several sealed packets and examined them. "News, Clara, and from my truant son."
"The messenger, an it so please ye," said the steward, "announces the Earl is on his road hitherward, and with a goodly company."
"'Tis even so," said Lady Leicester; "he writes me word he hath returned from Lisbon, where nothing but discomfort, sickness, and mortality attended the English army. Six out of eighteen thousand having already fallen victims to the climate."
"And have you news of others present in that ill-omened expedition?" inquired Clara.
"Nothing save that some of his companions of the expedition are with him. The Queen, I find, by another packet," said Lady Leicester, "is much blamed for permitting this expedition to be undertaken at all since it has thus failed. Nay, she hath been rated by Burleigh. The royal lioness is, therefore, chafed in spirit."
"Ah! and here is another letter," continued the Countess, as she perused a somewhat curious document, as curiously worded, and after a fashion not uncommon at a period when, "in speaking of dangerous majesty," it was necessary to be guarded. The letter was brief and secret, partly in figures, and the Countess read it aloud to her friend: