'Yes, I have had the same feeling about Sir Philip which you express,' Sir Fulke Greville said. 'Dante has raised love far above mere earthly passion to a religion, which can worship the pure and the spiritual rather than the mere beauty of the bodily presence. This breathes in much of Philip's later verse. You know how he says he obeyed the muse, who bid him "look in his heart, and write, rather than go outside for models of construction." That great work--great work of yours and Sir Philip, the _Arcadia_--teams with beauties, and Pamela is the embodiment of pure and noble womanhood.' 'Ah!' Lady Pembroke said, 'my brother and I look forward to a time of leisure and retirement, when we will recast that lengthy romance, and compress it into narrower limits. We know full well it bears the stamp of inexperience, and there is much concerning Philoclea that we shall expunge. But that time of retirement!' Lady Pembroke said, 'it seems a mockery to speak of it, now that the chief author has just left us to plunge into the very thick of the battle of life.' 'I am well pleased,' Sir Fulke said, 'that Sir Philip should have so able a secretary at his elbow--Mr William Temple. The scholar's element will be a refreshment to Philip when the cares of government press heavily. Mr William Temple's _Dialectics_ is dedicated, with no empty profession of respect and affection, to one who has ever been his friend. Forsooth,' Sir Fulke Greville said, 'friends, true and loyal to your brother, Madam, are as numerous as the leaves that rustle under our feet.' 'Yes,' Lady Pembroke said; 'that is a consoling thought; and he goes to friends, if one may judge by the terms Count Maurice of Nassau writes of him to the English Ambassador, Master Davison. My father has shown me a copy of that letter, which speaks of Philip as his noble brother, and honoured companion-in-arms.' 'How proud one of the chiefest of the friends you speak of would be could he know that Philip is gone forth to wage war against Spain.' 'Good Hubert Languet! I always think no man in his first youth had ever a truer and more faithful counsellor than Philip possessed in that noble old Huguenot. And how he loved him, and mourned his loss!' The big bell was now sounding for the mid-day dinner, and Lady Pembroke said,-- 'However unwillingly, we must break off our converse now. You will write to me if you repair to Flushing; or you will find a welcome at Wilton on any day when you would fain bend your steps thither. Philip's friend must needs be mine.' 'A double honour I cannot rate too highly,' was the reply. 'I will ever do my best to prove worthy of it.' CHAPTER XII FIRE AND SWORD 'What love hath wrought Is dearly bought.'--_Old Song_, 1596.