“’Fore God, woman,” she cried, “thou art bewitched, or desperately wicked! What, in the fiend’s name, mean ye?”
“In the fiend’s name truly, for he alone inspired me! Look here—and then pardon me, Elizabeth; in God’s name, pardon me!”
As she spoke, she held aloft, in her thin and bird-like fingers, a massive ring of gold, from which a sapphire of rare price gleamed brilliantly, casting a bright, dancing spark of blue reflection upon her hollow, ghastly features. “Know you,” she screamed, “this token?”
“Where got you it, woman? Speak, I say, speak, or I curse you!—where got you that same token?” The proud queen shook and shuddered as she spoke, like one in an ague-fit.
“Essex!” sighed the dying countess, through her set teeth—“the murthered Essex!”
“Murthered? God’s death, thou liest! He was a traitor—done to death! O God! O God! I know not what I say!” and a big tear-drop—the first in many a year, the first perhaps that ever had bedewed that iron cheek—slid slowly down the face of Elizabeth, and fell heavily on the brow of the glaring sufferer, who still held the ring aloft, in hands clasped close in attitude of supplication. “Speak,” she said again, in milder accents, “speak, Nottingham: what of—of Essex?”
“That ring he gave to me, to bear it to thy footstool, and to pray a gracious mistress’s favor to an erring but a grateful servant—”
“And thou, woman—thou!” absolutely shrieked the queen.
“Gave it not to thee—that Essex might die, not live!” was the steady reply. “Pardon me before I die; pardon me, as God shall pardon thee!—”
“God shall not pardon me, woman!—neither do I pardon thee! He, an’ he will, may pardon thee; but that will I do never! never!—by the life of the Eternal, NEVER!”—and, in the overpowering fury and agitation of the moment, she seized the dying sinner with an iron gripe, and shook her in the bed, till the ponderous fabric creaked and quivered. Not another word, not another sob passed the lips of the old countess: her frame was shaken by a mightier hand than that of the indignant queen; a deep, harsh rattle came from her chest; she raised one skinny arm aloft, and after the jaw had dropped, and the glaring eyeball fixed, that wretched limb stood erect, appealing as it were from a mortal to an immortal Judge!