Varney officiously assisted his lord to bed, and placed a massive silver night-lamp, with a short sword, on a marble table which stood close by the head of the couch. Either in order to avoid the light of the lamp, or to hide his countenance from Varney, Leicester drew the curtain, heavy with entwined silk and gold, so as completely to shade his face. Varney took a seat near the bed, but with his back towards his master, as if to intimate that he was not watching him, and quietly waited till Leicester himself led the way to the topic by which his mind was engrossed.
“And so, Varney,” said the Earl, after waiting in vain till his dependant should commence the conversation, “men talk of the Queen's favour towards me?”
“Ay, my good lord,” said Varney; “of what can they else, since it is so strongly manifested?”
“She is indeed my good and gracious mistress,” said Leicester, after another pause; “but it is written, 'Put not thy trust in princes.'”
“A good sentence and a true,” said Varney, “unless you can unite their interest with yours so absolutely that they must needs sit on your wrist like hooded hawks.”
“I know what thou meanest,” said Leicester impatiently, “though thou art to-night so prudentially careful of what thou sayest to me. Thou wouldst intimate I might marry the Queen if I would?”
“It is your speech, my lord, not mine,” answered Varney; “but whosesoever be the speech, it is the thought of ninety-nine out of an hundred men throughout broad England.”
“Ay, but,” said Leicester, turning himself in his bed, “the hundredth man knows better. Thou, for example, knowest the obstacle that cannot be overleaped.”
“It must, my lord, if the stars speak true,” said Varney composedly.
“What, talkest thou of them,” said Leicester, “that believest not in them or in aught else?”