have been committed to the Tower, had not Amy recalled her words, when she was consigned to Lord Hunsdon's care as bereft of her reason, Varney coming forward and pretending that she had just escaped from a special treatment for her madness. Leicester insisted on an interview with her, when she implored him to confess their marriage to Elizabeth, and then, with a broken heart, told him that she would not long darken his brighter prospects. Varney, however, succeeded in persuading him that Amy had acted in connivance with Tressilian, and in obtaining medical sanction for her custody as mentally disordered, asking only for the earl's signet-ring as his authority. The next day a duel between Tressilian and the earl was interrupted by Dickie, who produced the countess's note, and, convinced of her innocence, Leicester confessed that she was his wife. With the queen's permission he at once deputed his rival and Sir Walter Raleigh to proceed to Cumnor, whither he had already despatched Lambourne, to stay his squire's further proceedings. Varney, however, had shot the messenger on receiving his instructions, and had caused Amy to be conducted by Foster to an apartment reached by a long flight of stairs and a narrow wooden bridge. The following evening the tread of a horse was heard in the courtyard, and a whistle like the earl's signal, upon which she rushed from the room, and the instant she stepped on the bridge, it parted in the middle, and she fell to her death. Her murderer poisoned himself, and the skeleton of his accomplice was found, many years afterwards, in a cell where he secreted his money. The news of the countess's fate put an end to the revels at Kenilworth: Leicester retired for a time from Court, and Sir Hugh Robsart, who died very soon after his daughter, settled his estate on Tressilian. Leicester pressed for an impartial inquiry. Though the jury found that Amy's death was an accident (concluding that Lady Dudley, staying alone "in a certain chamber", had fallen down the adjoining stairs, sustaining two head injuries and breaking her neck), it was widely suspected that Leicester had arranged his wife's death to be able to marry the Queen. Characters Principal characters in bold Giles Gosling, host of the 'Bonny Black Bear' Michael Lambourne, his nephew John Tapster Will Hostler Laurence Goldthread, a mercer Edmund Tressilian Wayland Smith Thomas Radcliffe,