Elizabeth brusquely silenced the mumbling professors, and addressed their candidate with the lofty kindness and courtesy which none knew better how to employ.

'Young sir, we have admired your zeal in setting forth the excellent conceit of your masters, and as we feel that you have mainly contributed to their success and our diversion, we are minded to bestow on you a token of our gratitude and regard-recognising with some little regret that you purpose to follow an honourable aim, in which, however, it will better beseem our bishops, chancellors, and the dignitaries of our courts, civil and ecclesiastical, to encourage and reward you, than a simple woman and Queen.'

Master Lee's carriage was quiet and self-restrained, as if he were in a measure abstracted from and raised above the honour conferred upon him, and there was nothing awkward or churlish in his-air while he answered promptly, with a rush of fresh emotion, 'Lady, I will lay my honours at thy feet.'

'God wot, we would not deprive thee of them, fair sir, sure that they will be well earned,' answered Elizabeth, with sweetness, well-pleased with the ready, firm compliment; yet belike it were pity that so comely a youth, and so loyal, should sink into an ashen-faced bookworm when there are spurs to be worn, and more clamorous renown to be won. If you care to don Elizabeth's colours, Master Lee, and assume the stars in Ariadne for the device on your shield, like the head of your house, and quit

dun Cambridge, its dim night-watches and monotonous pages, sacrilege though it be to say it here, Elizabeth will not forget her squire, nor what he has forsaken at her word.'

Lee looked fixedly at his Queen as she tempted him-so fixedly, that he seemed to see through and beyond her words and the images conjured up, and the light on his cheek and in his eye faded instead of flashing into fire.

'By your Grace's leave, I say you nay. I humbly thank you; but I know no other nurse than Alma Mater, no arena save what her search after truth supplies. I should but disappoint your goodness. I crave your pardon, madam, but if I am to vindicate your gracious notice, I must remain a scholar in the schools of Cambridge.'

'The University hath a claim upon him,' put in a morose Provost.

'And I would balk no man's inclinations,' amended Elizabeth, proudly, vexed, as her high, sensitive spirit was prone to be piqued, by the slightest resistance to her influence. Be a scholar or parson, or hedger and ditcher, if thou wilt; but, at least, receive my piece-a bauble which I had designed for the best performer, without conceiving that he would be so reasonable a man. A wise head on young shoulders, sir secretary?'

'Moderation is not so common that your Grace need deride it,' replied the privileged servant, soberly.

'Now read me no lecture, Cecil, within academic shades, but leave that to the genius of the place,' protested Elizabeth, impatiently, proceeding hastily and indifferently with the ceremony of conferring the royal gift on the unabashed student who knelt down at a signal-and indeed the passage was quite a common one, and these costly trifles, ivory lutes, ruby signets, gold arrows, were bestowed as bountifully as her silver pennies.

With the sovereign's abated condescension, the intense curiosity of the bystanders slackened, and in the reaction

Lords whispered to ladies, as well you may think, And ladies replied with nod, titter, and wink. Gradually the concentrated attention of the party ebbed from the young orator, so fickle and fleeting is fame, and he would have been suffered to withdraw with his toy without more notice, had it not been for no less a person than Lord Robert, who, appeased by the novice's insensibility, or aroused by the singular spectacle of his disinterested pursuit of knowledge, advanced towards him graciously.

'Sir scholar, we have many examples of valour at our Divinity's court, but few of such sheer simplicity -by simplicity, be it known, I mean crystal clearness of soul in thy devoir. Accept, I pray thee, also, this remembrance from Robert Dudley, who hath known something of the high emprise and charmed toil of science, but who hath a more heavenly mistress still.' And with great nobleness

and courtesy he unfastened from a chain round his neck a chased medallion, and presented it to Lee, while his bright roving eye rested for a moment wistfully, and perchance longingly, on him who had the lineaments of an anchorite.

At that moment the Queen rose from her chair of state-her train was marshalled-the doctors bowed and backed out before her-the whole grand throng swept from the Hall of Trinity, and William Lee saw them no more for many a day.

CHAPTER II.

THE CLERK OF CAMBRIDGE.

N one of the deserted libraries of Cambridge-deserted in those gala days of the Queen's presence-sat Master Lee, not choked by the dust, if depressed by the silence, bending over a folio, yet not now engrossed with the short-sighted wisdom of ages. 'So that was a courtly pageant,' he muttered to himself; 'yonder fair dame, she is liker a dame than a damselthough I doubt if my Lord Robert would prove an altogether uxorious husband-is the Princess of Woodstock, fierce Henry's daughter; and men spend their lives sunning themselves in her smile-it is a gladdening one, makes the heart leap somehow ; but you said wrong, my lord, she is not woman born of woman is more heavenly than science, divinest philosophy, history, poetry. Have with the sages of Greece and Rome, the Stoics and the Peripatetics, Cicero and Seneca; and not they alone, but England's worthies, Chaucer, Gower,

no