He served the noble, the lofty, the high-minded Leicester, and was more proud of depending on him than he would be of commanding thousands.

But the abject lord who stoops to every adverse circumstance, whose judicious resolves are scattered like chaff before every wind of passion, him Richard Varney serves not.
He is as much above him in constancy of mind as beneath him in rank and fortune." Varney spoke thus without hypocrisy, for though the firmness of mind which he boasted was hardness and impenetrability, yet he really felt the ascendency which he vaunted; while the interest which he actually felt in the fortunes of Leicester gave unusual emotion to his voice and manner.
Leicester was overpowered by his assumed superiority it seemed to the unfortunate Earl as if his last friend was about to abandon him.

He stretched his hand towards Varney as he uttered the words, "Do not leave me.

What wouldst thou have me do ?" "Be thyself, my noble master," said Varney, touching the Earl's hand with his lips, after having respectfully grasped it in his own; "be yourself, superior to those storms of passion which wreck inferior minds.

Are you the first who has been cozened in love--the first whom a vain and licentious woman has cheated into an affection, which she has afterwards scorned and misused?
And will you suffer yourself to be driven frantic because you have not been wiser than the wisest men whom the world has seen?
Let her be as if she had not been--let her pass from your memory, as unworthy of ever having held a place there.