Blessed be woman for her faculty of admiration, and especially for her
tendency to admire with her heart, when man, at most, grants merely a
cold approval with his mind!

Drawing his chair beneath the blaze of a solar lamp, Edward Caryl untied
a roll of glossy paper, and began as follows:--


THE LEGEND

After the death-warrant had been read to the Earl of Essex, and on the
evening before his appointed execution, the Countess of Shrewsbury paid
his lordship a visit, and found him, as it appeared, toying childishly
with a ring. The diamond, that enriched it, glittered like a little
star, but with a singular tinge of red. The gloomy prison-chamber in
the Tower, with its deep and narrow windows piercing the walls of stone,
was now all that the earl possessed of worldly prospect; so that there
was the less wonder that he should look steadfastly into the gem, and
moralize upon earth's deceitful splendor, as men in darkness and ruin
seldom fail to do. But the shrewd observations of the countess,--an
artful and unprincipled woman,--the pretended friend of Essex, but who
had come to glut her revenge for a deed of scorn which he himself had
forgotten,--her keen eye detected a deeper interest attached to this
jewel. Even while expressing his gratitude for her remembrance of a
ruined favorite, and condemned criminal, the earl's glance reverted to
the ring, as if all that remained of time and its affairs were collected
within that small golden circlet.

"My dear lord," observed the countess, "there is surely some matter of
great moment wherewith this ring is connected, since it, so absorbs your