leave your considerations for your own affairs. For in some things you
had clear commandment, which you did not, and in others none, and did.
We princes be wary enough of our bargains. Think you I will be bound
by your own speech to make no peace for mine own matters without their
consent? It is enough that I injure not their country nor themselves
in making peace for them without their consent. I am assured of your
dutiful thoughts, but I am utterly at squares with this childish
dealing."

Blasted by this thunderbolt falling upon his head out of serenest sky,
the sad. Sir. Thomas remained, for a time, in a state of political
annihilation. 'Sweet Robin' meanwhile, though stunned, was unscathed--
thanks to the convenient conductor at his side. For, in Elizabeth's
court, mediocrity was not always golden, nor was it usually the loftiest
mountains that the lightnings smote. The Earl was deceived by his royal
mistress, kept in the dark as to important transactions, left to provide
for his famishing' soldiers as he best might; but the, Queen at that
moment, though angry, was not disposed, to trample upon him. Now that
his heart was known to be broken, and his sole object in life to be
retirement to remote regions--India or elsewhere--there to languish out
the brief remainder of his days in prayers for Elizabeth's happiness,
Elizabeth was not inclined very bitterly to upbraid him. She had too
recently been employing herself in binding up his broken heart, and
pouring balm into the "scorpion's sting," to be willing so soon to
deprive him of those alleviations.

Her tone--was however no longer benignant, and her directions were
extremely peremptory. On the 1st of April she had congratulated
Leicester, Heneage, the States, and all the world, that her secret
commands had been staid, and that the ruin which would have followed,