‘I knew that I should marry you, Frank, or else that I should never marry at all.’
‘There now! We both had it. Well, that is really wonderful!’
They stood among the memorials of all those great people, marvelling at the mysteries of their own small lives. A voice at their elbows brought them back to the present.
‘This way, if you please, for the kings,’ said the voice. ‘They are now starting for the kings.’
‘They’ proved to be a curiously mixed little group of people who were waiting at the entrance through the enclosure for the arrival of the official guide. There were a tall red-bearded man with a very Scotch accent and a small gentle wife, also an American father with his two bright and enthusiastic daughters, a petty-officer of the navy in his uniform, two young men whose attention was cruelly distracted from the monuments by the American girls, and a dozen other travellers of various sexes and ages. Just as Maude and Frank joined them the guide, a young fresh-faced fellow, came striding up, and they passed through the opening into the royal burying-ground.
‘This way, ladies and gentlemen,’ cried the hurrying guide, and they all clattered over the stone pavement. He stopped beside a tomb upon which a lady with a sad worn face was lying. ‘Mary, Queen of Scots,’ said he, ‘the greatest beauty of her day. This monument was erected by her son, James the First.’
‘Isn’t she just perfectly sweet?’ said one of the American girls.
‘Well, I don’t know. I expected more of her than that,’ the other answered.
‘I reckon,’ remarked the father, ‘that if any one went through as much as that lady did, it would not tend to improve her beauty. Now what age might the lady be, sir?’
‘Forty-four years of age at the time of her execution,’ said the guide.