“Nay, then, my lord, I will be bold.  I speak for my own life as well as for your lordship’s.  I like not this lady’s tampering and trickstering with this same Edmund Tressilian.  You know him, my lord.  You know he had formerly an interest in her, which it cost your lordship some pains to supersede.  You know the eagerness with which he has pressed on the suit against me in behalf of this lady, the open object of which is to drive your lordship to an avowal of what I must ever call your most unhappy marriage, the point to which my lady also is willing, at any risk, to urge you.”

Leicester smiled constrainedly.  “Thou meanest well, good Sir Richard, and wouldst, I think, sacrifice thine own honour, as well as that of any other person, to save me from what thou thinkest a step so terrible.  But remember”—­he spoke these words with the most stern decision—­“you speak of the Countess of Leicester.”

“I do, my lord,” said Varney; “but it is for the welfare of the Earl of Leicester.  My tale is but begun.  I do most strongly believe that this Tressilian has, from the beginning of his moving in her cause, been in connivance with her ladyship the Countess.”

“Thou speakest wild madness, Varney, with the sober face of a preacher.  Where, or how, could they communicate together?”

“My lord,” said Varney, “unfortunately I can show that but too well.  It was just before the supplication was presented to the Queen, in Tressilian’s name, that I met him, to my utter astonishment, at the postern gate which leads from the demesne at Cumnor Place.”

“Thou met’st him, villain! and why didst thou not strike him dead?” exclaimed Leicester.

“I drew on him, my lord, and he on me; and had not my foot slipped, he would not, perhaps, have been again a stumbling-block in your lordship’s path.”

Leicester seemed struck dumb with surprise.  At length he answered, “What other evidence hast thou of this, Varney, save thine own assertion?—­for, as I will punish deeply, I will examine coolly and warily.  Sacred Heaven!—­but no—­I will examine coldly and warily—­coldly and warily.”  He repeated these words more than once to himself, as if in the very sound there was a sedative quality; and again compressing his lips, as if he feared some violent expression might escape from them, he asked again, “What further proof?”

“Enough, my lord,” said Varney, “and to spare.  I would it rested with me alone, for with me it might have been silenced for ever.  But my servant, Michael Lambourne, witnessed the whole, and was, indeed, the means of first introducing Tressilian into Cumnor Place; and therefore I took him into my service, and retained him in it, though something of a debauched fellow, that I might have his tongue always under my own command.”  He then acquainted Lord Leicester how easy it was to prove the circumstance of their interview true, by evidence of Anthony Foster, with the corroborative testimonies of the various persons at Cumnor, who had heard the wager laid, and had seen Lambourne and Tressilian set off together.  In the whole narrative, Varney hazarded nothing fabulous, excepting that, not indeed by direct assertion, but by inference, he led his patron to suppose that the interview betwixt Amy and Tressilian at Cumnor Place had been longer than the few minutes to which it was in reality limited.