"And what said the Queen?" asked Leicester hastily.
"She took him up roundly," said Varney, "and asked what my Lord Sussex had to do with a wife, or my Lord Bishop to speak on such a subject. 'If marriage is permitted,' she said, 'I nowhere read that it is enjoined.'"
"She likes not marriages, or speech of marriage, among churchmen," said Leicester.
"Nor among courtiers neither," said Varney; but, observing that Leicester changed countenance, he instantly added, "that all the ladies who were present had joined in ridiculing Lord Sussex's housekeeping, and in contrasting it with the reception her Grace would have assuredly received at my Lord of Leicester's."
"You have gathered much tidings," said Leicester, "but you have forgotten or omitted the most important of all. She hath added another to those dangling satellites whom it is her pleasure to keep revolving around her."
"Your lordship meaneth that Raleigh, the Devonshire youth," said Varney--"the Knight of the Cloak, as they call him at court?"
"He may be Knight of the Garter one day, for aught I know," said Leicester, "for he advances rapidly--she hath capped verses with him, and such fooleries. I would gladly abandon, of my own free will, the part--I have in her fickle favour; but I will not be elbowed out of it by the clown Sussex, or this new upstart. I hear Tressilian is with Sussex also, and high in his favour. I would sp
