The days passed sweetly with Arabella Stuart and William Seymour, for the time during which the Countess of Shrewsbury permitted him to stay. They laid out their plans; they made their arrangements; they talked over the future; and imagination, that pleasant painter, represented the coming days in all the glittering colours of hope and light. Even when he had left Malvoisie, and was deprived of the society of her he loved, still the sweet recollection and the bright expectation gladdened the present, and cheered him while he made all the preparations which were necessary for the execution of his scheme. But, in the meantime, the views and designs of others, with little, if any reference to himself, were proceeding on a course calculated to frustrate all his hopes for a time, if not for ever; and while he, in total ignorance that such things were taking place, was rejoicing at the near approach of happiness, a hand was stretched out to snatch it from him, just as the cup was being raised to his lip. Oh! could he but have seen the events that were occurring at the Court of England; could he have heard the words that were spoken, and divined the plans that were formed, he might have found matter for anxiety and apprehension, it is true, but love would certainly have found some stratagem to frustrate those purposes, which now marched calmly on to their accomplishment. We nave said that the designs and views of which we have spoken had little direct reference to Seymour, and to the schemes for his escape with Arabella. The eyes of the King and his courtiers had been completely blinded by the precautions he had taken; his visit to Malvoisie had not been even whispered amongst the scandal-mongers of the Court; and although the preparations which he had been making after his return to London were not altogether unnoticed, the tongue of calumny had assigned to them a very different motive from the real one, and most unintentionally favoured his purposes, by screening the truth under a falsehood. The suspicion which had been so strongly entertained of the attachment existing between Arabella and himself had almost altogether died away; and rumour had falsely attributed to him some tender connexion in the native land of intrigue--Italy, which was supposed to be once more leading him away from the shores of his own country. In the meantime, the King's favourite, Rochester, was pursuing, with all the vehemence of strong and overpowering passion, the guilty course which he had entered upon with the beautiful fiend who had got him in her toils. His criminal intimacy with Lady Essex was no longer whispered with a smile, or pointed at in an epigram. It was the open talk of the whole Court, the subject of grave and painful reprehension to the few good and wise who were admitted to the royal circle, and of laughter and merriment to the gay, the unthinking, and vicious multitude which thronged the palaces of James I.