Floods of light were again streaming through the lofty halls of Holyrood. Music was pealing loud and harmonious above the ringing of wine-cups, the clatter of a banquet and the merry din of voices. Massive plate, emblazoned with the royal arms of Scotland, glittered on the board; silks, satins, and jewels shone and sparkled around it. In goblets of gold the red wine bubbled to the brim, and stately heads were bent, and bright eyes glistened while gallants laughed and whispered, and ladies blushed and smiled. All that luxury could lavish, all that refinement could require, enhanced the splendour of the feast. Tall, elaborate devices of architecture, mythology, and fancy, peering from amongst winter plants and flowers, decked the tables; whilst the very claws of the pheasants and moor-fowl were gilt ere they were served; the peacock roasted, yet not despoiled of his sleek plumage, offered a lordly delicacy; and the boar’s head, garnished with rosemary, grinned its fierce welcome with the customary apple in its mouth.

At a cross-table, behind a huge candelabra, shedding a refulgent light on her features, and in front of a sideboard piled with rich plate and burnished trenchers, till she seemed literally enshrined in gold, sat the Queen, with the most distinguished of her nobility on either hand. Her face was radiant with animation, for pomp and pleasure were not without their charms to her impressible nature; and her manner, as her guests could not but observe, combined inimitably the cordiality of the hostess with the dignity of the sovereign. Her Maries were placed at the adjoining tables, and more fortunate than their mistress, had at least the chance of sitting next those individuals in whose conversation they took especial pleasure. These lotteries, however, are very apt to turn up an unreasonable proportion of blanks, and while Mary Carmichael could not even see where Walter Maxwell was supping, and Mistress Beton, to her dismay, found herself placed three seats off from the English Ambassador, Mary Hamilton alone saw the seat next her occupied by the person whose society she liked best in the world, and none but herself knew how she trembled when her cup was filled by the poet ChastelÂr.

Is it not always so? We take incalculable pains to prepare for our festivities; how anxious we are that they should go off well; how engrossed is the butler with his plate-basket and his ice-pail; how concerned the host that my lord’s venison should not be overdone. Every plait must be laid to a hair’s-breadth in the glistening tresses of the lady of the house. Two mirrors satisfy her, at last, that folds and flounces and flowers are still adjusted to a nicety, but still there weighs on her mind the list of precedence, and the probable contingency that the most important guest may not turn up at all. Perhaps it may come across even her conventional mind that there are games for which it is scarce worth while to purchase such expensive candles, and that a two o’clock dinner with the children is a more agreeable repast, after all. Ay! even at the best, there is a speck on the Épergne, an earwig in the flower-basket, a flavour of wormwood in the liquid amber called champagne. Surgit amari over and over again! Perhaps it was not so in that banquet of which the halt and the maimed and the blind were invited to partake. Perhaps there are no insects in a dinner of herbs; no heart-burnings in the crust we share with hunger; no bitter drop in that cup, though it be but cold water, wherewith we pledge celestial charity, and ‘entertain an angel unawares.’

ChastelÂr was flushed and preoccupied; thus much was apparent to the eyes that watched him with such eager interest. Ever and anon he glanced uneasily towards the royal table, but ere long something he noticed there seemed to give him intense satisfaction, and filling his goblet to the brim, he devoted himself, like an accomplished gallant, to his fair neighbour. Such is the nature of his sex. A woman always feels a little humbled when she thinks she has been too gracious, even towards a favourite; a man, on the contrary, though his affections may be fixed elsewhere, considers it due to himself to be as captivating as he can. And then they talk of female vanity and female love of admiration.

‘I was sorry for my young knight to-day,’ said Mary Hamilton, not, it must be confessed, very truthfully, and without raising her eyes to her companion’s face. ‘Poor boy! he would have been so pleased to win. I wish he had carried off the prize.’

ChastelÂr could not forbear giving her a meaning look.

‘And yet you did not choose him,’ he said. ‘He was given you by the Queen. Did he really carry your good wishes with him, Mistress Hamilton? I marvel his lance could fail; if I had thought that, mine would hardly have been so steady.’

He scarce knew what he was saying. Flushed with success; intoxicated with his own wild happiness; excited as such imaginative natures are by music, lights, wine, and beauty, he was in that reckless mood which drains pleasure eagerly from every cup, and thinks not of to-morrow.

‘You are jesting with me,’ she answered, in a low, trembling voice.

Oh! had he known how these light words of his thrilled to that kind unsuspecting heart, he would have spared her for very pity’s sake.

‘Nay, fair mistress,’ he replied, gaily, ‘I do not jest with you; there are some with whom to break jests is like breaking lances, sharp-pointed ones, too, and ending in a combat À l’outrance. I am afraid of you, Mistress Hamilton.’

‘Why so?’ she asked, looking up at him with her clear, guileless eyes. ‘Am I so very formidable? You do not seem much afraid of anything to-night.’

A gleam of triumph shot from his eyes, and once more he glanced towards the upper end of the hall, then lowering his voice, he whispered—

‘There are contests in which to win is as perilous as to lose. There are lists in which the true knight fights unarmed whilst his adversary is clothed in steel. Give me my coup-de-grÂce, Mistress Hamilton,’ he added, with a bright smile, ‘I must depart now to prepare for the masque. Before I go I yield me “rescue or no rescue.”’

‘You have a merciful jailer,’ was all she could trust herself to reply; but as he rose from his seat and left the hall, Mary Hamilton’s eyes followed him with a wistful, longing gaze, and Mary Hamilton’s heart thrilled in her bosom, with a keen sense of pleasure that was not far removed from pain.

Meanwhile the banquet progressed merrily, not uncheered by those lively strains that have made Scotch music, from time immemorial, so appropriate to all scenes of merry-making or excitement. Wine, too, flowed freely, for the stalwart barons would, indeed, have deemed themselves wanting in respect to their sovereign had they stinted their accustomed measure because they sat at a queen’s table. Thirsty souls they were, some of those iron old paladins, and quaffed such mighty draughts as their degenerate descendants would scarce believe; but it was observed that those among them who were most liberal in their potations, became also graver, more dignified and sententious, in proportion to the quantity they imbibed.

Here and there a vacant seat might be perceived, as several gallants quitted the feast by stealth to prepare for the coming pageant, which was tacitly conceded to be a surprise.

Ere long the lower tables, at the extremity of the hall, were drawn, and their occupants, gathering round the royal circle, began to display that flutter of expectation which pervades all assemblies when there is anything to be seen.

Presently two grave ushers with white wands threw open the folding-doors, and, amidst peals of laughter from the men, and exclamations of astonishment, not without a shriek or two, from the ladies, in rushed a troop of satyrs, and commenced clearing a space in the middle of the hall for the further exhibition of the performances.

These masquers were in uncouth and fantastic disguise: their flesh-coloured coverings were adorned with wreaths of oak-leaf and ivy; horns sprouted from their brows; goat-skins covered their nether limbs, which terminated in cloven feet; and long tails depended from their backs, which they brandished in their hands, and used as whips to clear a passage in the throng.

The Queen clapped her hands, and laughed aloud. ‘None but Sebastian could have plotted this,’ she exclaimed. ‘Come hither, ’Bastian, that we may thank thee for thine ingenious device.’

The satyr thus summoned, who seemed indeed the leader of the rest, and no mean representative of the god Pan, approached the royal presence with quaint reverence, beating a measured dance with his cloven feet, and brandishing his tail the while.

James Geddes, the fool, in an irrepressible state of excitement, could not forbear imitating his gestures with a grotesque fidelity that provoked shouts of laughter.

Sebastian, somewhat irritated, and taking advantage of his position, struck at him viciously with his tail; but the fool, familiar with such salutes, dodged it adroitly, and the blow fell across the shapely leg of the English ambassador, who winced, and turned crimson with the pain.

Mr Randolph, however, had far too much self-command to betray his anger, which was little alleviated by the laughter that the Queen could not repress.

‘How now?’ quoth the statesman, trying hard to force a smile; ‘is Pan like Atropos, that he spares neither Wisdom nor Folly, but smites down all alike?’

‘It’s the knave aye gets the fule’s arles,’[7] remarked James; ‘or he wadna be siccan a knave; an’ it’s the fule aye tynes[8] them, or he wadna be siccan a fule!’

And so speaking, he sat composedly down at the Queen’s feet, pulling a grimace at the same time that was too much even for the Earl of Moray’s gravity.

The satyrs then proceeded to enclose a space for the coming masque. So thorough was their disguise as to baffle even the keen eyes of those who were most interested in their identity; and as the sylvan monsters ranged themselves on each side the hall, soft voices behind them whispered—

‘Are you Sholto?’ or, ‘It must be Archibald!’ to receive no more satisfactory answer than a stifled laugh.

A flourish of music now announced the continuation of the pageant, and the three planets, Mercury, Mars, and Venus, made their appearance, habited in robes of silver gauze and spangles: the first, winged strictly according to mythology at head and heel; the God of War, armed with glittering helmet, flashing buckler, and greaves of burnished gold; and the Queen of Beauty, represented by young George Douglas, extremely embarrassed with her draperies, and blushing as Venus surely, save on one memorable occasion, never blushed in her life.

These representations of the starry host were then succeeded by the Nine Muses, all in different colours, and, notwithstanding their beardless faces and classical folds, displaying legs unusually muscular for Muses, and also a good deal more limb than is customary with that sex to which the ‘tuneful Nine’ are supposed to belong.

Melpomene, too, could not forbear laughing outright; Clio, albeit the daughter of memory, forgot whether she was herself or Urania; and Terpsichore, somewhat flushed with sack, caught her feet in her petticoats, and narrowly escaped the indignity of entering the royal presence on her head. They trooped off, however, after making their obeisance to the Queen, and ranged themselves in front of the satyrs on either side the hall.

After them a score of cavaliers, mounted on the well-known hobby-horse, of which the sweeping housings concealed its rider’s real legs, whilst his false ones dangled outside in ludicrous union with its gambols, plunged and frolicked into the apartment. Half were represented as huntsmen, half as heathen Turks, and they blew their horns, or brandished their scimitars, with an energetic gravity edifying to behold. One truculent-looking Saracen earned immortal honour by the life like manner in which he backed his hobby-horse the whole length of the hall, and then caused it to rear straight on end ere he took up his position, counterfeiting inimitably the coquetry of the practised rider, and the repressed mettle of the unwilling yet obedient steed. Some of the courtiers whispered that it was Lord John Stuart; others, the Grand Falconer; not a few believed it to be the Warden of the Marches in disguise; but the better informed were all the time aware that it was no less a personage than Her Majesty’s head cook.

Then came pilgrims decked with sandals and scalloped shell, leading with them bears, wolves, tigers, and an occasional unicorn; all these quadrupeds presenting alike the anomaly of a pair of hind legs jointed the wrong way, but performing their parts in other respects with decorous fidelity, and an obvious difficulty in keeping up with their leaders. These were succeeded by musicians bearing lutes, harps, wind instruments, and guitars, dumb indeed in reality, but going through all the motions of a lively measure, which the Queen’s real musicians were playing for their encouragement.

Next came two little cupids armed with silver bows and baldricks, their rosy limbs uncovered, and their golden curls mingling with the wings of gauze that stood from their shoulders. Pretty urchins they were, but somewhat too young for their task, and already rubbing their sleepy eyes with dimpled little fists. Hand in hand, they trotted into the hall boldly enough, but ere half the distance was accomplished their hearts failed them; they stopped, looked about them, and one began to cry. This was too much for his little companion’s philosophy, who incontinently followed his example, but both were immediately caught up by some of the ladies, and quickly caressed into composure. The Queen, too, had them brought to her forthwith, and soothing them with kind words and sweetmeats, sent them to bed happy and consoled.

During this unexpected interlude, the principal feature of the pageant, and one which had tasked to the utmost the ingenuity of its contrivers, now entered the hall. It consisted of a fleet of ships constructed of light wicker-work, and moved upon wheels, which were worked unseen from within. The sides of these galleys were formed of cloth, coloured to represent beams of cedar, fastened and inlaid with gold; the masts and spars were gilt, the tackle of silver tissue, and the sails of gauze. A murmur of admiration greeted the pageant as it glided up the hall with the stately motion of ships sailing over a smooth sea.

On the deck of each bark stood an unknown lord, dressed with the utmost magnificence, and closely-masked. So resolved were these silken pirates not to be identified, that their doublets, their hose, and even their gloves, were padded so as to conceal the shape of their figures, their limbs, and their very hands. They were known to be gallants of the Court, but that was all. The nobles laughed and applauded, their dames whispered and speculated, when, with a burst of music rising into loud, triumphant tones, the ships increased their speed, and the leading galley, closely followed by the rest, bore swiftly down upon the circle which contained the Queen and her ladies, with obvious intention of a capture.

Each masquer took a partner by the hand, and courteously entreated her in dumb show to enter his gorgeous bark. The Queen first set the example of compliance, and amidst shouts of admiration the barks veered round, and, doubly freighted, floated once more proudly down the hall.

Then the squadron divided, the sails were furled, the voyagers disembarked, and each gallant kneeling low as he gave his hand to his companion and helped her to alight, unmasked at the same instant, while the music changing to a merry lilt, the couples found themselves arranged in due order to tread a well-known measure called ‘the Purpose,’ on the polished floor.

This ‘Purpose,’ as it was called—a word which signified confidential conversation—was a dance resembling the cotillon so popular with our grandmothers, and not entirely despised to-day when lights are waning after a night of festivity, and gloves are soiled, and flowers faded, and cheeks begin to pale before the coming dawn. Then is the moment to infuse fictitious vigour borrowed from excitement into the closing scene—then the careful mother at the emptying doorway, with shawl and wrapper on her braceleted arm, waves her unwelcome summons to the bounding damsel, warmed up into bloom once more, and every turn is precious now because every turn must be the last. Then shall the prey, which has been playing round it all night, gorge the glittering bait for good and all. Wind up the reel, in with the tackle, out with the landing-net—goldfish or gudgeon, he is gasping helpless on the bank; but had it not been for the cotillon, he might have been wriggling his tail even now in derision through the elusive waters, might have despised the fire and ignored the frying-pan to this day.

The ‘Purpose’ was so called because the figure exacted that at stated intervals the couples should dance together through the doorway into an adjoining room, and having made the circuit of that apartment, should return, unbosomed of any secrets they might have had to interchange, to the rest of the laughing company. It was a figure obviously adopted for the triumph of coquetry, and the discomfiture of mankind.

The leading pirate had dutifully borne off the Queen, and when he unmasked, Mary discovered that ChastelÂr was to be her partner in the dance. The poet’s manner was more full of deference than usual, but there was a light of unearthly happiness in his eye.

Randolph had secured Mary Beton, nothing loth. That very morning the ambassador had received instructions from his Government to leave no stone unturned till he had discovered the Queen’s predilections amongst the numerous marriages that were proposed to her, all and each of which gave Elizabeth such disquiet. He proceeded now deliberately to sound her principal maid-of-honour, under cover of making fierce love to her himself.

With the loud music and the long intervals of inaction there was ample opportunity for the process.

‘We shall soon have nobler doings even than these,’ observed Mr Randolph, whispering confidentially to his partner, ‘when another royal wedding gladdens the walls of Holyrood. Shall we dance the Spaniard’s bolero, or the Austrian’s gavolte, or our own old English brawl? Whatever be the measure, Mistress Beton, my only hope is that we may dance it together.’

Randolph looked very tenderly at her while he spoke, and his partner’s ruff heaved visibly.

‘Nay; you statesmen are too premature,’ she replied. ‘Ladies are not to be thus wooed and won in a day, much less queens. The Archduke, Don Carlos, Lord Robert—which of them can be called a fitting mate for our Sovereign? You must not hurry us thus, Mr Randolph; you are indiscreet.’

‘And cannot you guess why I am so anxious for your mistress to marry?’ whispered the insidious statesman, pressing nearer to his listener. ‘Is it not that alone which will free her beautiful maidens from their self-imposed celibacy? Till that auspicious day even our thoughts are not our own, and a man of honour must be tongue-tied on the subject nearest his heart.’

Mary Beton blushed and trembled. It was almost a declaration, and from that impenetrable and capable man! The staid maid-of-honour was losing her head every moment.

‘It may come sooner than any of us think,’ she murmured, giving him her hand to lead her, as the dance demanded, on their tour through the rooms. ‘Sooner than any of us desire,’ she added, with a sudden resumption of her usual stateliness.

He pressed the hand affectionately, and his voice became exceedingly trusting and confidential. Mr Randolph was a man who never hesitated to waste a sprat for the purpose of catching a salmon.

‘It will not be Lord Robert,’ said he; ‘I can tell you that, though it is as much as my life is worth. But I would trust you with my head, beautiful Mistress Beton—far rather than my heart,’ he added, in a low fond voice; ‘were it not indeed too late to make that reservation.’

The light seemed to swim in Mary Beton’s eyes, and the music was like surging water in her ears. A true woman, despite her natural caution and her court education, she returned confidence for confidence.

‘They do talk of a bridegroom,’ she whispered. ‘It is a secret, Mr Randolph; but I feel I am safe with you. The Countess of Lennox has already suggested her son, and I think the Queen is not averse to the idea. If it should ever be,’ she added, with rising colour and some hesitation, ‘we shall be differently circumstanced, of course; and, in short, the future must always be uncertain for us all.’

He replied with less warmth than she perhaps expected; but his commonplaces were extremely polite, nay complimentary, and when he led her back to the company, there was that complacent expression on his countenance, which is worn by a man who finds in the hand dealt him the leading card of the game.

Far different was the ‘Purpose’ entertained by Walter Maxwell and Mary Carmichael, in their interval of conversation. With the frank kindliness of his nature, that honest gentleman had determined at least to ask an explanation, ere he condemned at once and for ever the woman he felt he still loved only too well.

With this intention he had joined the merry band of masquers, though his heart was sadly out of tune for mirth, and had carried off his mistress without hesitation from the fair circle who were waiting to be abducted. Nay, when he unmasked, and Mistress Carmichael, who had recognised him from the first, stole a look at his face, it wore its usual grave but kindly expression, and the displeasure which had so discomfited her all day, and spoilt her gaiety all night, had entirely disappeared. He was determined to be just and kind and temperate in his dealing with her, though more than life depended on the result.

When he spoke it was in a low, soft voice, but every syllable was strangely emphatic and distinct.

‘I behaved unkindly in the Queen’s Park,’ said he, ‘but I was hurt and offended at your conduct. Had I not cause?’

She blushed, yet her eye was bright with repressed exultation.

‘How have I offended you?’ she asked, quickly. ‘I would not do so willingly, you know.’

‘I thought you different from the others,’ he resumed, with more agitation. ‘In common charity I ask to be undeceived. Did I not see you in the Abbey garden the night before last?’

She trembled all over, but looked him full in the face nevertheless, yet so scared, so startled.

‘What then?’ she murmured, in obvious agitation.

‘You were not alone,’ he continued, with a severe brow; ‘who was your companion?’

She drew a long breath as if immensely relieved, nay, she almost smiled as she replied—

‘Then, you do not know? you cannot even guess?’

‘Had I known,’ he answered, significantly, ‘it would not have been the lady I should have questioned.’

She raised her head haughtily.

‘And by what right do you question the lady now?’ she exclaimed. ‘Am I answerable to Walter Maxwell for my conduct? I take leave to think, sir, you might be better employed than in watching my movements.’

He was growing very angry and consequently calmer every second.

‘You had rather give no explanation?’ he said, with studied politeness.

She bowed her head in silence, but the colour was fading faster and faster from her cheek.

‘You decline it,’ he added, still very low, but through his set teeth.

‘Distinctly!’ answered the lady, adding, as only a woman would at such a moment, ‘You are neglecting the figure, the dance is going on without you.’

After this the pair derived but small gratification, we imagine, from the amusements of the evening. Walter Maxwell took the earliest opportunity of departing to cool his irritation in the night air, whither, as we dislike seeing a strong man wrestling with pain, we will not follow him. Mary Carmichael, however, bore her part bravely to the end; and although her answers were at times a little absent, and her laughter somewhat misplaced, none could have guessed by her outward bearing that she had so recently seen the great stake of her life’s happiness set, played for, and lost. She was not the only gambler in the hall. There was one heart amongst those dancers within a few yards of her that had resolved to-night to play the great game in which the odds were incalculably against it, and which to lose was ruin entire and irretrievable. There were a couple now gracefully moving through the figure of ‘the Purpose,’ as the music swelled and sank in triumphant harmony or pleading sweetness, of whom one was enjoying unconsciously the gratification of the moment, gay, kindly, generous, and impressionable, yet calm and dignified because thinking no evil, and the other with beating heart and swimming brain was steeped to the lips in the intoxication of that madness which comes but once in a lifetime, and seems to have but one fatal and invariable result.

Woe to the idolater! It is written on the tables of stone: Woe to the idolater! Be the image what it may, wood brass, or marble, or one ‘a little lower than the angels,’ whom the worshipper must needs exalt above the Being to whom the heavenly Host itself is but as dust in the hollow of a man’s hand. The punishment shall not come from abroad; it shall not be wrought by foreign enmity, nor owe its keenest pang to foreign injustice. If so, the sting would be extracted; the vengeance incomplete. No; Dagon alone shall crush the deluded votary who grovelled at Dagon’s pedestal. It is the hand he trusted that shall strike him to the heart, the feet he kissed that shall spurn him in the dust. When he shall have stripped himself of all to do his false god service; when he shall have lost his friends, his wealth, his fame, his self-respect, and forfeited his honour, and pawned his birthright, then, and not till then, shall the image of stone rock and totter and fall upon him and crush him to powder. Were there no world but this, it would indeed be better for that man that he had never been born.

The Dagon of to-night was fair to look on, queenly and graceful and gloriously beautiful. It seemed unnatural to refuse her homage; it seemed ecstasy to kneel and supplicate and adore. The worshipper was in the wildest stage of his idolatry. He looked for no greater glory than to lay down life and heart and soul at her feet.

What good results could come from such a link between the lovely Queen of Scotland and the infatuated minstrel of France?