"Well," answered Rochester; "well, it shall be done. I will ask the King for the embassy to Russia on his behalf. I know he aims at much higher things, indeed; and nothing less than a seat in the Council, with some high office in the state or household, would satisfy his ambition. But he shall be offered this embassy. If he refuse it, the consequences be on his own head. "What! then you do see he is ambitious?" cried the Countess. "I wronged my Rochester's good judgment. I thought he had deceived you, and that you did not perceive the tool that he would make of you." "Oh, I have known his ambition long," replied Rochester, "and was prepared to give it a check in due time. Perhaps as well now as hereafter." "Better, better far," replied the Countess. "Those who defend a breach, fire on the men who begin to climb the ladder, lest when they are at the top it be too late. Away then, Rochester, away! see that thing done; and, when you can tell me that the embassy is offered him, you may come back, and shall have smiles for your reward." After those words they parted, Rochester hurrying to take that new step in the wrong course which was to carry him forward to many others; and the Countess of Essex remaining to brood over her hatred and vengeance, till she worked herself into regret that she had not exacted more of her weak and guilty paramour. CHAPTER XXXII. In the times of our Sovereign Lord, His Sacred Majesty King James I., of happy memory, that peculiar district of the world called Lambeth was in a very different state and condition from that in which it is beheld now-a-days. It was not then a close, thronged, noisy, and somewhat turbulent parish, a borough in itself, sending members to Parliament, and having vast objections to church-rates; but it was actually almost a rural district, with an Archbishop's palace and church, a few houses gathered in the episcopal neighbourhood, and several fine old mansions, with their gardens extending down to the water, occupying the whole bank of the river opposite to Westminster and the Strand. Where now stand patent shot manufactories, and wharfs and warehouses, were then smooth, green, shaven lawns, and tall trees, and wildernesses, and terraces,--and the aspect of the whole place, as far as the different style of architecture and gardening would permit, was much more like Richmond, without its hill, than the famous borough of Lambeth.