#1821

‘The villain,’ she said, ‘the cold-blooded, calculating slave!—But I unmasked him, Janet—I made the snake uncoil all his folds before me, and crawl abroad in his naked deformity—I suspended my resentment, at the danger of suffocating under the effort, until he had let me see the very bottom of a heart more foul than hell’s darkest corner.’

‘Strong!’ answered the Countess—‘Ask the hind, when the fangs of the deer-hound are stretched to gripe her, if she is strong enough to spring over a chasm. I am equal to every effort that may relieve me from this place.

By such a train of argument did Leicester labour to reconcile his conscience to the prosecution of plans of vengeance, so hastily adopted, and of schemes of ambition, which had become so woven in with every purpose and action of his life, that he was incapable of the effort of relinquishing them; until his revenge appeared to him to wear a face of justice, and even of generous moderation.

The lady cast a sidelong glance upon the great mirror as they passed it by, and then said, ‘I know not how it is, but I think not of my own person, while I look at the reflection of thine. Sit thou there,’ she said, as they approached the chair of state, ‘like a thing for men to worship and to wonder at.’