It is not always in the immediate presence of royalty that there is the most enlivening conversation, or the greatest amount of gaiety about a court. Although the Queen of Scotland was the essence of good-humour, and when in comparative privacy encouraged to the utmost freedom of intercourse and absence of formality amongst her attendants, yet on an occasion like the present, in a gathering of the great nobility of her kingdom, it may easily be imagined that an unusual amount of decorum and restraint was observed throughout the circle which actually surrounded their sovereign.

At a short distance, however, from these graver seniors were grouped the Maries, in the splendour of their courtly dresses, and the bloom of their own intrinsic charms. The young ladies seemed to have completely recovered whatever ill effects may have been produced by the hardships of a sea voyage, and their plumage, like that of certain tropical wild birds, appeared the sleeker and more variegated for the storms through which they had passed. We would fain possess the pen of that eloquent writer who describes in our morning journals the weekly recurring changes of Parisian fashion, with a fidelity not to be surpassed by the superlative gossiping powers of BrantÔme or Pepys, and a touching earnestness that never stops short of enthusiasm, and often amounts to poetry; then would we detail the tasteful costumes of this seductive quartette with an accuracy that should make the ladies’ mouths water, and every hair on the head of the family stand on end. We would depict in glowing language their several robes of orange and violet and courtly cramoisie—the stately fall of their folds, the delicate edging of their lace, the trim defences of the jealous ruff, and rich embroidery on the shapely glove. We would not ’bate a pearl, nor a tress, nor a flounce, till the dazzled reader should count every stitch of needlework on the attire of these sumptuous damsels. But we must leave such visions to younger and keener eyesights, satisfied to take for granted the radiance of the Maries from the admiration they excited, and the compliments that were paid them by all.

As ChastelÂr followed the MarÉchal through the outer circle, he lingered for a few minutes amongst the maids-of-honour, to take his leave of the ladies with whom of late he had been so closely associated. It would have been amusing to mark the different effect his farewell produced on each individual of the four.

Mary Beton, half-a-head taller than her companions, magnificent in dress and deportment, received his salutation with the dignity of an empress accepting the homage of a vassal.

Mary Seton laughed in his face.

‘Farewell!’ said she, with mischief gleaming from her eyes: ‘Farewell! our fellow-sufferer and Prince of Troubadours. As you are never likely to cross the seas again, be sure you take back with you to France nothing but what belongs to you. None of the hearts of us unfortunate maids-of-honour, for instance. They are prized in Scotland, I can tell you; and the Maries want at least as many as they have got amongst the five of them, you may be sure!’

‘And suppose I leave my own instead,’ answered ChastelÂr, laughing, yet at the same time colouring—an embarrassment not unmarked by Mary Hamilton, who shot one eager glance at him, and turned her eyes away, blushing too; ‘suppose I must return to France, fair mistress, a loser by the exchange?’

‘We’ll have the palace swept and searched for the missing article,’ she answered, gaily. ‘I think I can promise you that the one who has got it won’t keep it. There, you needn’t look so shocked, Mistress Beton! You can’t guess which of the Maries has robbed our poor poet so mercilessly. It’s a sweet name, Mary, is it not? But don’t forget it rhymes to “vary.” And so, good luck to you, ChastelÂr! and fare you well!’

‘Souvent femme varie, fol qui s’y fie,’ answered the poet, forcing a laugh, though a less acute observer than any one of the four might have noted that he was distressed at the turn their conversation had taken, and that the wilful girl’s shaft had been shot home. ‘Adieu, Mistress Carmichael,’ he added, as she, too, in her turn frankly bade him farewell; and then he passed on to Mary Hamilton, and paused for an instant, irresolute, before the dark-eyed maid-of-honour.

She did not offer him her hand as the others had done. She never lifted her looks to his face. Pale as she usually was, she turned paler than ever, and her cold, distant bearing would have almost seemed to infer that she was offended, and that her greeting was extorted from her as a duty of ceremony, rather than springing from the free impulse of friendship.

And yet he knew it was not so. Though scarcely so quick-sighted on such matters as women, even men have an intuitive perception that they are beloved. In either sex the consciousness produces a kindly feeling towards the worshipper, and it seems hard to deny a few gentle words where so much is ungrudgingly bestowed. Mistaken compassion! Perhaps the fiercest efforts of hate would be less cruel than this ill-judged lenity. It is like hanging out the beacon where it shall guide the bark on to the quicksand. It is like Varney counterfeiting Leicester’s whistle to lure Amy Robsart to destruction. When people pass spurious money in exchange for sterling gold, they find themselves ere long in the felon’s dock; but there is no law to punish the coiner who stamps a few false words with the royal die of truth, and pays them away unblushingly, for all the happiness and all the welfare of the poor fool he deceives.

‘You are going back to France,’ said Mary Hamilton, with a wonderfully composed countenance and steady lip. ‘It is your home—I wish you joy of your return.’

‘Nay,’ answered ChastelÂr, his voice softening while he spoke. ‘You know how happy I have been in Scotland. How devoted I must always be to this court and this country. I must follow d’Amville to Paris for the present, but the one hope of my life will be that I shall soon return.’

He spoke truly enough; he even hoped the royal lady then employing all the fascinations of her manner on Morton and his kindred, might hear his last words and give him one responsive glance to carry with him into his banishment. In this he was disappointed. The Queen, seated at some distance from the group, and surrounded by her barons, was for the moment ‘every inch a Queen,’ and ChastelÂr passed out of Holyrood, with Mary Hamilton’s ‘farewell’ warmer and more hopeful since his last words, to warn him (could, indeed, warning ever profit in such cases), that, in stretching for the rose he would never reach, he was trampling the poor violet ruthlessly beneath his feet.

She seemed in better spirits, too, after he was gone, although silent and inattentive to the surrounding gaiety, a distraction not unnoticed by Mary Beton, who believed herself officially answerable not only for the dresses and deportment of her three companions, but for the thoughts and sentiments of their inmost hearts.

‘I have told you twice,’ she said at length with an offended air, ‘that the Queen rides out to-morrow for the hawking after early mass, and that you and Mary Seton will be in attendance. You will wear the sad-coloured riding gear passamented with silver, and French hats—but neither of you seem to heed me.’

‘She is thinking of a French head, rather than a French hat,’ laughed incorrigible Mary Seton; ‘but indeed I have listened to you even more attentively than usual. Ah! Mistress Beton, what would I not give to possess your careful forethought and common sense! You never neglect anything—you never forget anything. The Queen trusts you with her state-secrets, and when you carry her work to her in the Council-chamber, even Maitland and Morton look upon you as if you were one of themselves. Why are you not weak and giddy like me, or pensive and sad like Hamilton, or absent and haughty like Mary Carmichael has grown of late? Look at her yonder holding the Queen’s train as if she were the sovereign, and our beautiful Mistress the maid-of-honour!’

Mary Beton smiled, not displeased at the adroit flattery of her junior. She did indeed pride herself on two especial qualities—utter impassibility, and scrupulous attention to details.

‘I am somewhat older than the rest of you,’ she said, bridling her handsome neck within her handsome ruff, ‘and I have learned to avoid all pleasures and interests that take my attention from my duty. I am always responsible and always employed. I have no time for the follies that seem to afford the rest of you so much amusement.’

‘And yet you would become them well,’ said the other, coaxingly. ‘Come, now, be persuaded to play Diana in the next masque. I will dress your hair myself, and the gallants all vow you are fitted for the part both in person and character. Handsome and stately and cold.’

‘That is exactly why I do not care to join in it,’ replied the elder lady, with increasing cordiality, for no daughter of Eve was ever yet insensible to flattery, even when ugly and repulsive and old, whereas Mary Beton could boast considerable attractions. ‘I tell you, my dear, it is better to keep out of temptation. You envy me my self-command, you say, and I repeat to you it is a quality I possess because I am heart-whole and free.’

‘But so am I,’ interposed the girl, vehemently, ‘and so are we all, I suppose, in reality, for the matter of that; and yet it is possible that our time maybe coming too,’ she added, reflectively. ‘Ah! Mistress Beton, I shall see you some day with a lover as stately as yourself, perhaps. What an imperial pair you will make!’

Mary Beton looked by no means displeased. The smile on her handsome face partook of a meaning expression not devoid of triumph, as though the contingency were neither very remote, nor wholly disagreeable; but, of course, the less she felt it to be unalterable, the more emphasis she laid on her denial.

‘Never!’ she exclaimed, strenuously. ‘I am surprised, my dear, at your thinking for an instant of such an absurdity. I never saw one yet, to my fancy, that I could like better than another.’

‘Nor I neither,’ echoed Mary Seton, eagerly; adding, in a voice of unusual gravity, and with a wistful expression on her countenance rarely seen there, ‘I think if I did, it would be an unlucky day both for him and for me!’

Even while she spoke an unusual stir in the ante-room heralded the approach of some distinguished stranger who was to be received with more than ordinary ceremony. In such cases the Queen’s ladies gathered round their mistress as in duty bound, although at other times it was Mary’s practice to retain but one of them in the immediate vicinity of her person, and to permit the rest to mingle in the general circle, amusing themselves in their own way.

The duties devolving on ‘the Maries’ were, indeed, much to their liking, and might well be called a ‘labour of love.’ They vied with each other in passionate adoration of their mistress, whose sweet temper and generous disposition never failed to gain the hearts of all those who came about her person. If there was a charm in all the Stuarts which won blind devotion from their associates, what must have been the fascination that surrounded the gentlest and loveliest scion of that illustrious race!

The Queen of Scots was a thorough gentlewoman, in the noblest and fullest acceptation of the term. That she lacked firmness where her affections were involved, and promptitude of action where her safety was threatened, what is this but to say that she was a woman and not a hero? Courage, both the masculine spirit that braves mortal peril, and the feminine fortitude that can sustain suffering and sorrow, she proved that she possessed on more than one stricken field, in more than one dreary house of humiliation and bondage. On both these chivalrous qualities the last scene of her life drew largely, and Bayard himself, the bravest of the brave, could not have faced death more nobly than did Mary, the fairest of the fair. Yet with all this she was exquisitely sensitive of the feelings of others; she could not bear to give pain; she hesitated to remonstrate, and could scarcely bring herself to chide. The regulations of her household, to the carrying out of which the Queen herself attended with housewifely care, prove the regard she entertained for the personal comfort of her domestics.

The allowance for the table of her ladies and maids-of-honour was the same as that of their sovereign. If the reader is curious to see the bill of fare for a royal dinner in the sixteenth century, the following are its contents:—

‘Four soups, four entrÉes, a piece of “beef-royal” boiled, a loin of mutton, and a capon; of roast meat, one neck of mutton, one capon, three pigeons, three hares, and two pieces of fat meat. For the dessert, seven dishes of fruit, and one of chicory-paste, one gallon of wine, one quart of white wine, and one of claret; eight rolls of bread.’ The latter item appears as if this plentiful supply were a dinner for but eight people. Probably, however, the remains of the feast furnished forth the inferior tables. A characteristic memorandum appears at the same time directing that the Queen’s ladies, including the Maries, shall have the same diet as their mistress.

Mary Carmichael was in attendance on Her Majesty, and holding the royal train during the conversation we have detailed. It was broken off abruptly by the stir in the ante-room.

‘This must be the English Ambassador!’ exclaimed Mary Beton, drawing herself up to her full height, and assuming her most frigid air of Étiquette.

‘He has come back sooner than he was expected, and I wish he had stayed away altogether,’ observed Mistress Seton, on whom Randolph had made no favourable impression during their previous acquaintance, for the latter had held Elizabeth’s credentials at the court of Holyrood from the Queen of Scotland’s first arrival, and had been absent to receive personal instructions from his own sovereign but for a few weeks.

‘What is the matter with Mary Carmichael?’ whispered Mistress Hamilton, anxiously, as the three young ladies glided into their places behind the Queen. She might have spared herself the question, for almost ere it was spoken the agitation which caused it had disappeared; and although, when Randolph entered the presence-chamber, Mary Carmichael had started, turned very pale, and dropped the royal robe from her hand, ere he had advanced three paces, her colour had returned somewhat higher than before, and she was fulfilling her duties more scrupulously than ever, with an unusual expression of cold indifference on her fair and haughty face.