comforting letters arrived, and the Earl began to raise his drooping
head. Heneage, too, was much relieved, but he was, at the same time, not
a little perplexed. It was not so easy to undo all the mischief created
by the Queen's petulance. The "scorpion's sting"--as her Majesty
expressed herself--might be balsamed, but the poison had spread far
beyond the original wound.

"The letters just brought in," wrote Heneage to Burghley, "have well
relieved a most noble and sufficient servant, but I fear they will not
restore the much-repaired wrecks of these far-decayed noble countries
into the same state I found them in. A loose, disordered, and unknit
state needs no shaking, but propping. A subtle and fearful kind of
people--should not be made more distrustful, but assured." He then
expressed annoyance at the fault already found with him, and surely if
ever man had cause to complain of reproof administered him, in quick
succession; for not obeying contradictory directions following upon each
other as quickly, that man was Sir Thomas Heneage. He had been, as he
thought, over cautious in administering the rebuke to the Earl's
arrogance, which he had been expressly sent over to administer but
scarcely had he accomplished his task, with as much delicacy as he could
devise, when he found himself censured;--not for dilatoriness, but for
haste. "Fault I perceive," said he to Burghley, "is found in me, not by
your Lordship, but by some other, that I did not stay proceeding if I
found the public cause might take hurt. It is true I had good warrant
for the manner, the, place, and the persons, but, for the matter none,
for done it must be. Her Majesty's offence must be declared. Yet if I
did not all I possibly could to uphold the cause, and to keep the
tottering cause upon the wheels, I deserve no thanks, but reproof."

Certainly, when the blasts of royal rage are remembered, by which the