The Court was now established at Stirling, and a very dull and melancholy Court it was. The visit at Wemyss Castle had indeed borne ample fruit; but as if there was some fatality hanging over Mary Stuart’s head, the days of courtship which, with most women, form such a happy era in life, were fraught for her with much annoyance, vexation, and distress. Though she had listened coyly at first to her handsome young suitor, she had not prohibited him from broaching the agreeable subject again; and by the beginning of April Lord Darnley was known to the whole of Scotland as the accepted lover of the Queen. It is needless to dwell upon the confusion created by such an announcement at the different Courts of Europe, where her marriage had been made the subject of endless intrigue and diplomacy, nor the access of ill-humour which it produced in Elizabeth, who could never make up her mind as to the exact manner in which she should treat her cousin. Cecil was sharply reproved for not having earlier foreseen so probable a contingency; Randolph received a rap over the knuckles for his tardiness in forwarding the disagreeable intelligence; and Lady Lennox, for no graver offence than that of being Darnley’s mother, was committed to the Tower.

In Scotland, the popular opinion was in favour of the match, although the vulgar, with their usual love for the marvellous, affirmed that their Queen’s affections had been gained by magic arts; the favourite rumour being that Darnley had presented Her Majesty with an enchanted bracelet, made by the famous sorcerer Lord Ruthven, who had shut himself up fasting for nine days and nights for the purpose, and finished it off in so short a space of time with no assistance but that of the arch-fiend, his fellow-workman.

The spell, however, which the lover had cast upon his mistress was probably stronger than anything likely to result from the black art, originating as it did in beauty of person, charm of manner, and above all, the sympathetic attraction of young blood. That they had plighted their troth to one another was only to be presumed from the intimacy the Queen permitted him, and the obvious delight she experienced in his society.

Randolph was puzzled. He was fain to have some certain intelligence to convey to Cecil; and, although he had thoroughly sounded Mary Beton, who was beginning to get tired of attentions which never became more definite, he suffered no opportunity to escape him of watching the affianced pair.

The Court, we have said, was dull and melancholy. Darnley, stretched on a sick bed with an attack of measles, was sedulously attended by the Queen. His illness shed a gloom over the royal household, and Randolph was nearly satisfied in his own mind that the marriage was as good as concluded. He resolved, nevertheless, to place his suspicions beyond a doubt.

It was a sunshiny day in April, and the diplomatist knew that he was likely to see Mistress Beton on the southern terrace of the Castle about noon. He awaited her there accordingly, with a great affectation of anxiety and agitation. The lady, on the contrary, looked three inches taller than usual, and was as cold as ice.

‘I have longed to see you, fair madam,’ said the courtly gentleman; ‘there is no sunshine for me where Mistress Beton is not, and I pine like some tropical bird for the reviving warmth of her smiles.’

The comparison seemed a little ridiculous, as she contemplated ‘the bird,’ dressed with scrupulous attention, in the extremity of the mode, and wearing an enormous ruff. She smiled somewhat scornfully, as she replied—

‘You seem to keep your plumage marvellously sleek in the shade.’

‘The bird seeks its mate,’ answered he, laughing good-humouredly; ‘and the two-legged creatures here below, like the fowls of heaven, always wear their gaudiest feathers in the pairing season. Mistress Beton, the cage-door is open at last, and you are now free. Is it not so?’

He took her hand while he spoke, and pressed it warmly, but she released it with an impatient gesture, and answered angrily—

‘What mean you, Master Randolph? My freedom is not dependent upon you, I trow; nor do I see in what manner it concerneth you. I pray you, sir, let go my hand!’

‘Nay, but is it not true that the Queen-bird hath chosen her mate?’ he proceeded affectionately, and determined not to be affronted, at least not yet. ‘In plain English, or rather in your pretty Scotch, tell me truth, fair Mistress Beton: this Queen of yours hath given her consent to her kinsman, and the maidens are released from their vow?’

‘I am not here to tell my mistress’s secrets,’ answered the lady, none the less severely that her conscience reminded her she had not always been so discreet. ‘Surely Master Randolph can get information more reliable than mine, or he hath indeed lived in ignorance for long!’

She was thinking that he had of late neglected her shamefully; but although his quick ear detected much of pique in her tone, there was so little affection in it, that he determined to alter his tactics, but warily, of course, and by degrees.

‘You are offended with me, Mistress Beton,’ said he, in a quiet, mournful voice, ‘and therefore you are pitiless. Well, you will know better hereafter, perhaps when it is too late. I have but remained at this Court for the sake of others, and now it is time that I was gone. You must yourself know that my position here has been a false and delicate one: I am looked on coldly by your Queen; I am an object of jealousy and distrust to this new favourite of hers; I am continually reproached by my own employers for betraying too strong a bias towards the Scottish interest; and, worse than all, those whose good opinion I most value, and for whose sake I have lost so much, turn upon me at the last, and seem determined to fall out with me, whether I will or no. But it takes two to make a quarrel, Mistress Beton, and I am resolved not to be one. Farewell! we part friends. Is it not so?’

A woman could hardly resist such an appeal from a man whom she had once cared for, if ever so little. She gave him her hand frankly, of her own accord this time, and murmured a few commonplace expressions of leave-taking and good-will.

Randolph bowed over the hand he held, and drew a rare jewel from his doublet.

‘You will accept this from me as a keepsake,’ said he, coldly and courteously; ‘perhaps you will look on it sometimes, and think of me more kindly when I am gone.’

It was a large gold locket, in the form of a heart, suspended from two clasped hands, richly ornamented with precious stones, and of a peculiar and fanciful device. Mary Beton started when she set eyes on it.

‘Where did you get that?’ she exclaimed, completely thrown off her guard. ‘It belongs to the Queen!’

Randolph owned one peculiarity: he never smiled when he was really pleased, but had a trick of half shutting his eyes when he considered he had the best of the game; he looked as if he held a trump card now, while he answered quietly—

‘That is surely mine own which I have fairly won. Lord Darnley paid me with that trinket in lieu of the fifty gold pieces he lost, when you and I beat Her Majesty and himself so handsomely at billiards the day before he was taken ill. I never thought the house of Lennox was overburdened with money, yet I can hardly believe its fortunes are at so low an ebb, that its heir must pay his debts with his love tokens.’

‘It is so, nevertheless,’ said Mary Beton, indignantly. ‘It was the Queen’s locket, and I saw her give it him with loving words, a thousand times more precious than the gift. Out upon him! a false knight! a recreant! I would have pawned my doublet first!’

Randolph had learned all he wanted to know. With a few kind phrases he soon took his leave of his companion, hurrying off, we may be sure, to convey the result of his inquiries without delay to his Court. It was not till he had been gone several minutes that Mary Beton cooled down sufficiently to reflect how indiscreetly she had suffered herself to be surprised, and how very unsatisfactory had been hitherto her dealings and relations with the English Ambassador.

The Maries were indeed all in trouble now, more or less. Here was their leader, the lady who expected them to look up to her for counsel and example, awaking to a sensation the most galling perhaps that can be experienced by the female heart—that of having been cozened out of its affections by one who has given nothing in return. In one way or another we all of us go on playing silver against gold all our lives through, but it is not in human nature to have this humiliating truth thrust upon its notice without vexation. Mary Beton fairly ground her white teeth together when she thought how near she had been to loving Mr Randolph very devotedly, and how that astute gentleman had been making a cat’s-paw of her all through, never so much as burning the tips of his own fingers the while. It was an aggravation to reflect on Ogilvy’s honest nature, and the sincere homage she had spurned for the sake of one so much inferior in every manly quality to the frank-hearted soldier. And now Ogilvy was absent from the Court, and perhaps consoling himself for her unkindness in the smiles of another. Well, he would come back again; and it would go hard but she would resume her sway, if once she turned her mind to it, and was really determined to try.

A woman’s spirit is tolerably elastic. We may say of it, as Horace says of the shipwrecked merchant, ‘mox reficit rates;’—the bark may have had awful weather to encounter, have lost spars, and masts, and tackle by the fathom, perhaps damaged her screw, and sustained one or two very awkward bumps against a shoal—never say die! she puts in hopefully to refit, jury-masts are rigged, fresh canvas bent, leaks carefully stopped, and damages repaired; the first fine day she launches forth to sea again, almost as good as new.

But there are some exceptions that cannot thus recover, some natures to whom one keen disappointment of the affections is a moral death-blow; nay, there are rare cases in which such a wound is physically fatal. Mary Hamilton had never been like the same woman since ChastelÂr’s death. With a pale cheek and a languid step she went about her duties indeed as usual, but the light of her life seemed to be gone, and the only time a smile ever crossed that beautiful sad face was when, in the exercise of her devotions, the soul seemed to assert its superiority over the body, and to lift itself out of this earthly darkness into the ‘everlasting day’ beyond. Everyone who came about Mary Hamilton seemed to acknowledge the refining influence of a spirit thus purified by suffering. The fiercest barons, the rudest men-at-arms felt softened and humanised while in her presence, and James Geddes the fool, after sitting gazing into her face for hours together, would break into a succession of such unearthly moans as subjected him to the discipline of the porter’s lodge forthwith.

Lively Mistress Seton was losing somewhat of her spirits and her elasticity. The laugh was no longer so frequent, though it might ring out at times as saucily as ever, and the step, though light and buoyant still, had acquired a more sober and regular tread as she went upon Her Majesty’s errands through the gloomy passages of Stirling Castle. The young lady was learning to think. In her heart she did not thoroughly approve of this proposed match on which the Queen was now so bent, and considered Lord Darnley, with all his outward advantages and accomplishments, by no means good enough for her dear mistress. Mary Seton had seen through him at once, as a woman often does, and detected under that fair outside the frivolous disposition, the reckless passions, and the utter want of heart beneath. If she had given her honest opinion, she would have said Bothwell was worth a dozen of him, and his big henchman, a hundred.

And what of Mary Carmichael? Proud, self-reliant, and undemonstrative, she was the last person on earth to have admitted that any anxiety or disappointment of her own could have deprived her cheek of one shade of colour, or dimmed her eye of one ray of brightness, and yet beautiful Mary Carmichael was losing day by day much of that brilliant freshness which had constituted no small portion of her beauty, and went about mournfully and in heaviness, as one who suffered keenly from some secret sorrow; yet the stranger who used to meet her in the garden at Holyrood had been seen at Stirling, and his clandestine interviews with the fair maid-of-honour had been of late more frequent than usual. If she was the happier for them, her appearance strangely belied her.

Yes, the Court was very dull now. Darnley was on a sick bed, and Mary and her maidens were in trouble, one and all.