 Alas, every day made that more difficult. The Queen and Leices∣ter, fearful of my finding among the many who professed themselves my ser∣vants, one whose views would interfere with theirs, immediately allotted me that weak wretch, Lord Arlington, for a hus∣band; and in countenancing his addresses, threw every other lover at a distance: at the same time giving me but too much reason to apprehend, if ever I was per∣mitted to marry, it must be as a sacrifice to both. Not daring to consult you on a subject I had so long concealed, and on which we must ever think so differ∣ently, and unwilling to blight the little gleam of sunshine love illumined your days with, I resigned myself up to a gloom which hardly the presence of Essex could dissipate.

A very short time rendered the inten∣tions of the Queen and Lord Leicester obvious to Essex. His impassioned soul, fired alike with love of me, and disdain of him I was commanded to love, treated Lord Arlington with so marked a con∣tempt, that nothing but the irresolution incident to weak minds, could prevent Arlington from making a mortal quarrel of it. Possessed in my confidence of the means to render Lord Leicester more tractable, the Earl of Essex solicited my consent to insist on that of your Lord, as well as his interest with the Queen, if he valued the preservation of his own se∣cret.
The tender love which attached me to you, alone could induce me to oppose a design of which my happiness was the ul∣timate object. But convinced an eclair-cissement of this kind would embroil me forever with Lord Leicester, and fill your suffering mind with a trouble beyond all those you had already experienced, I consented to see Lord Essex once more at Lady Pembroke's; and exerting at that

interview every power I possessed over his perturbed heart, to moderate his rage, and soothe his love, till the ensuing cam∣paign in the Netherlands should be over, I promised a steady resistance to every matrimonial proposal in the interval, and to decide his fate on his return. Know∣ing it vain to hope to actuate him by any selfish consideration of his own welfare, I buried in my own heart its deepest sources of apprehension, and bound him to patience by a strong representation of the dangers to which any rashness on his part would infallibly expose me. Those inflamed passions no other being could ever control, were regulated by my voice; and when necessity compelled us to part, I seemed to leave in his arms the dearer portion of my existence.
Occupied by feelings and views distinct from each other, and agreeing only in watching
