"I know a cure for jealousy. It is to speak truth to my lord at all times; to hold up my mind, my thoughts, before him as pure as that polished mirror, so that when he looks into my heart he shall see only his own features reflected there.[*] _Can he who took my little hands and made them wifely, laying therein the precious burden of his honour, afford to doubt the palms are clean?_" [Footnote: * Mrs. Orme's interpolations are all italicized.] No wonder Varney stared, and the prompter anathematized the sudden flicker of the gas jet that caused him to lose his place; there was no such written sentence as the last, and the rehearsal proved no sure index of all the countess uttered that night, but the play rolled on, and when the folding doors flew open and Amy sprang to meet her noble husband, the house began to warm into an earnest sympathy. In the scene that followed she sat with childlike simplicity and grace on the footstool at Leicester's feet, while he exhibited the jewelled decorations of his princely garb, and explained the significance of the various orders; and in the face upturned to him who filled the chair of state there was a wealth of loving tenderness that might have moved colder natures than that which now kindled in the deep violent eyes that watched her from the minister's box. Gradually the curious, timid, admiring bride is merged in the wife, with ambition budding in her heart, and exacting pride pleading for recognition and wifely dignities, and in this transformation the power of the woman asserted itself. Bending toward Leicester, until from the low seat she sank unintentionally upon her knees, she prayed with passionate fervour: "But shall not your wife, my love, one day soon be surrounded with the honour which arises neither from the toils of the mechanic who decks her apartment, nor from the silks and jewels with which your generosity adorns her, but which is attached to her place among the matronage, as the avowed wife of England's noblest earl? _'Tis not the dazzling splendour of your title that I covet, but the richer, nobler, dearer coronet of your beloved name, the precious privilege of fronting the world as your acknowledged wife_." Again, in answer to his flattering evasive sophistries, she asked in a voice whose marvellous modulations in the midst of intense feeling seemed to penetrate every nook of that vast building: "But why can it not be? Why can it not immediately take place, this more perfect uninterrupted union, for which you say you wish, and which the laws of God and man alike command? _Think you my unshod feet would shrink from glowing ploughshares, if crossing them I found the sacred shelter of my husband's name? Ah, husband! dost blanch before the storm of condemnation, which has no terrors for a wife's brave heart? It would seem but scant and tardy justice to own thy wedded wife!_"