Heated with wine, stung with jealousy, torn by conflicting feelings, Earl Bothwell paced the stone-floor of his bed-chamber, as a wild beast traverses to and fro between the sides of his cage. His step had the same noiseless elasticity, his air the same subdued ferocity, his eye the same lurid sparkle that seems struck from some quenchless fire within. If there are indeed hours at which the master-fiend is permitted to vex those human souls, who, for some wise purpose, are delivered like Job into his hand, the Lord Warden must have been that night a prey to the arch-enemy of our race. It needed but little addition to the frenzy of his mood to imagine a dusky shape, defining itself more and more distinctly in the gloom, stepping as he stepped, turning as he turned, whispering in his ear suggestions that curdled his very blood, while he pondered them, and yet were tinged with the strange fascination which all frantic expedients possess for despair. It takes a long apprenticeship to sorrow ere a man can bow his head in resignation and cease to struggle, nay, even to quiver under the lash: but he who has gained this faculty at the cost of anguished moments, none but himself and one besides can count, is indeed master of his fate.

Such, however, was far from the condition of the tameless border-lord. He could have fought, struggled, died with the fiercest champion that ever set his teeth in the grim smile of a death-grapple; but the Hepburn blood was not the stuff of which martyrs are made, and the fiercest scion of all the bold, bad men that constituted the pride of his line, was now, so to speak, like some demoniac of antiquity, wrestling and striving against himself, torn, and rent, and infuriated by the possessing spirit, which refused to be exorcised and come out of him. That night in his lonely room at Hermitage, Bothwell learnt many new and strange things, never to be forgotten whilst he had life. Depths of guilt, into which, heretofore, he would not have dared to look, were now opened up to him, and there was seduction in the very immensity of the abyss. Crimes, dazzling from their boldness, now seemed feasible, nay, almost justifiable, and entranced him by the reckless daring with which they must be carried out. He had been dreaming hitherto a soft sweet dream for years. He was awake now, broad awake, and the vision should become reality, or he would never dream again. He had been cozened long enough! What? The game was not yet played out. Turn and turn about, fair dame! And it was Bothwell’s turn now! He laughed a low hissing laugh within his beard, and then stopped, startling in his walk, for it seemed to him that the laugh was echoed by something in the room, and that the shape was close to his ear now, whispering, whispering, one continuous stream of upbraiding, and persuasion, and reproach, with maddening promise and stinging sarcasm, and here and there a devilish scoff.

But these paroxysms wear themselves out. By degrees the earl became calmer; by degrees he recalled the past and reviewed the present, and looked steadily on the future. The whirl of contending passions passed away to make room for a stern and gloomy resolve far more dangerous, and the molten stream of thought that had seared his brain, cooled down into the settled determination of the man.

There are seasons when the whole of our past lives seems presented to us as on a stage, each scene distinct and vivid as when it actually took place. Men are taught to believe that this occurs at the supreme moment ere the spirit leaves its dwelling, and when the heart clings so instinctively and so pitifully to its treasure here. Be this how it may, there can be no doubt that at periods of strong excitement, this clairvoyance, if we may so call it, acquires extraordinary power. For a moment it seemed to Bothwell that the gloomy walls of his chamber had disappeared, and he stood again beneath the sunny skies of France. Again the towers of Joinville started from the smiling plain, and he knelt once more to tender his homage to the fair widowed bride, who looked so sweetly down upon him, with her pleading womanly beauty, softening and enhancing the majesty of a Queen. It was the first time he had ever looked on that face, which, despite of all his madness, all his crimes, was imprinted thenceforth on his rebellious heart. He had seen it since in sorrow, in triumph, in levity, nay, in bitter anger and unjust displeasure against himself, but it was still the same face to him, the type of all that was pure and good and lovely upon earth, the charm that had wound itself into his whole being, that shed its magic glow over every scene and action of his life; whether he laid spear in rest, or flung his hawk aloft in air, or watched the last rays of sunset gilding the broad brown moor on a peaceful summer’s evening, still that face was ever present to him, with its quiet thoughtful beauty, and the kind look in its deep winning eyes; then he thought of the many, many times when he had vowed in his heart to cherish undying love and loyalty for her alone, to ask no happier fate than to suffer shame and sorrow for his Queen. Would he not have given his life-blood for her, oh! so gladly that morning at Holyrood, when he alone of all her nobles had grieved with her on her day of grief, when, overcome by his faithful sympathy, and stung by the cold ingratitude of the rest, she had turned her face away and wept? And was he so changed now that he could be plotting treason against his sovereign and violence towards his love? For a moment his better nature mastered him; the fierce set features writhed, the strong frame shook, and though he was alone in the room, in the hush of midnight, the proud noble bowed his head and turned his face aside, ere he dashed away the drops that had stolen unawares to his shaggy eyelashes.

But the devil was watching his opportunity, and what a picture did he now conjure up! The beautiful Queen in her robes of ceremony, with the crown upon her head and the orb and sceptre in her hands; ambassadors from England, France, Spain, Austria, thronging with their sovereigns’ congratulations; the nobility of Scotland proffering homage before the throne; and these regal honours shared by a tall handsome stripling, who would lift his lady-face scornfully, and stretch a weak girlish hand for him, Bothwell, to kiss! Worse than all, amongst the courtiers’ jeering faces, Moray’s cool sardonic smile, as of one who had foreseen the degradation from which, had his advice been taken, it would have been so easy to escape. And then the banquet and the wedded pair, sitting side by side, and the subsequent revel and the customary ceremonies, and the laughing guests departing one by one,—and then, and then,—the stillness of night brooding over the old pile of Holyrood, and Mary once more a bride, another’s bride, and Bothwell a laughing-stock!

‘Perdition! it shall never be!’ exclaimed the earl, dashing down, while he spoke, with the violence of his involuntary gesture, the lamp that stood on the table by his side. The few moments consumed in rekindling it gave him time to compose himself, and to determine on his future conduct. It was but a brief period, yet was it long enough for Bothwell to bid farewell, at once and for ever, to all the higher and purer feelings of his nature; to change him from a man who, with many faults and with ungovernable passions, yet possessed a certain frank uprightness, a certain chivalrous devotion to the one idol of his life, into an unscrupulous ruffian, prepared to commit any crimes, to go any lengths in the prosecution of his schemes, and willing in brutal selfishness to drag his idol down to the dust, rather than see it enshrined upon the pedestal of another. One moment cannot indeed change the whole character of a human being, though it may influence his whole conduct; but as it is the last ounce that breaks the patient camel’s back, so is it the one additional atom of sorrow, or unkindness, or disappointment, added to the mass, that overwhelms the poor sufferer’s powers of endurance, and drives him into the frenzy of despair, or leaves him stunned and sick at heart, in the helpless apathy of a ruined man. It would be well to think of this sometimes when we see the bruised reed so nearly broken, the kind generous nature so wearied and suffering and overladen. It is but an ignoble triumph to lend the tottering mass that slight push which sends it crashing to destruction. It is cowardly and un-English to ‘strike a man when he is down.’

Bothwell lit his lamp, and wrapping a furred bed-gown around him whilst he thrust his feet into the mules or slippers which would best muffle their tread, proceeded with swift and stealthy strides along the passages of his Castle, towards the eastern turret in which his kinsman was disposed. All was hushed and silent within the walls of Hermitage. The drowsy sentinels might have been sleeping on their posts, for neither stir of arms nor measured tread of steel-shod foot denoted their vigilance, yet, strange to say, the warden failed to observe this unusual silence. Nevertheless, preoccupied as he was, he marked a light still burning in Moray’s chamber, and instinctively he shaded the lamp he carried with his hand when he passed the narrow casements on the opposite side of the Castle-yard. Arrived at Maxwell’s door, he listened for a while, and satisfied himself by the deep breathing within that his kinsman was asleep; then shading his light once more, he entered the room softly, and made at once for the small travelling valise, in which he hoped to find the messenger had secured his despatches. But Maxwell had travelled the Borders ere this, and had profited by his experience. Ready dressed, booted and spurred, with his sword by his side, he lay prepared for a start, sleeping indeed, yet not so sound but that a sudden noise might waken him. Whatever he had about him of value was concealed in his breast, and could not be taken from him without disturbing his repose. Bothwell felt once for the haft of his dagger, and smiled grimly to himself, as he thought how easily he might possess himself of his guest’s despatches, and how lightly he would think now of such a crime as murder under his own roof. There was even a wild devilish triumph in the reflection that he could have so changed within an hour!

After a moment’s thought, however, he again passed unobserved from the room, and returned to his own as stealthily as he had come. There he spent the remainder of the night, still pacing up and down, up and down, and an hour before dawn summoned ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ already astir thus early, to a long and mysterious consultation, in which, though he yielded eventually, for the first time in his life the retainer presumed to remonstrate with his lord.