The tide of color rolled through the great inner doors, down to the
level of the gallery, and so on towards the river and the waiting
barges. It caught upon its crest Philip Sidney, who, striving in vain to
make his way back to where Ferne was standing, had received from the
latter a most passionate and vehement gesture of dissuasion. On came the
bright wave, with menace of discomfiture and shame, towards the man who,
surrounded though he was by petty courtiers, citizens, and country
knights, could hardly fail of recognition. Impossible now was his
disguise, where every hat was off, where a velvet cloak swung from a
shoulder was one thing, and a mantle of frieze quite another. He dropped
the latter at his feet, crushed the light mask in his hand, and waited.

It was not for long. Down upon him swept the cortege--the heart of the
court of a virgin Queen. At once keenly and as in a dream he viewed it.
Not less withdrawn was it now than a fairy pageant clear cut against
rosy skies and watched by him from the stony bases of inaccessible
cliffs--and yet it was familiar, goodly, his old accustomed company.
This face--and that--and that! how he startled from it laughter or
indifference or vagrant thought. There were low exclamations, a woman's
slight scream, pause, confusion, and from the rear an authoritative
voice demanding reason for the delay. Past him, staring and murmuring,
swept the peacock-tinted vanguard; then, Burleigh on one hand, Leicester
on the other, encompassed and followed by the greatest names and the
fairest faces of England, herself erect, ablaze with jewels, conscious
of her power and at all times ready to wield it, came the daughter of
Henry the Eighth.

A noble presence moving in the full lustre of sovereignty, a princess
who, despite all womanish faults, was a wise king unto her people, a
maiden ruler to whom in that aftermath of chivalry men gave a personal