"Believe, in particular, all that shall be said to you by a person who will give you a ruby ring from me, for I take it upon my conscience that the truth shall be told you of what I have charged her with, especially of what touches my poor servants, and regarding one of them in particular. I recommend you this person on account of her straightforward sincerity and goodness, and so that she may be placed in some good situation. I have chosen her as being most impartial and the one who will the most simply convey my orders. I beg of you not to make it known that she has said anything to you in private, as envy might harm her.
"I have suffered much for two years or more, and could not let you know it for important reasons, God be praised for all, and may He give you the grace to persevere in the service of His Church as long as you live, and may this honour never leave our race; so that we, men as well as women, may be ready to shed our blood to maintain the quarrel of the faith, putting aside all worldly interests. And as for me, I esteem myself born, both on the paternal and maternal side, to offer my blood for it, and I have no intention of degenerating. May Jesus, for us crucified, and may all the holy martyrs by their intercession, render us worthy of willingly offering our bodies to His Glory.
"Thinking to degrade me, they had my dais taken down, and afterwards my guardian came to offer to write to their Queen, saying he had not done this by her order, but by the advice of some of the council. I showed them the cross of my Saviour in the place where my arms had been on the said dais. You shall hear of our conversation. They have been more gentle since.
"Your affectionate cousin and perfect friend,
MARIE,
Queen of Scotland,
Dowager of France."
CHAPTER XV.
AN INTERVAL OF SUSPENSE.
The end did not come so quickly as Mary had expected. Although the sentence had been publicly proclaimed throughout the kingdom, Elizabeth hesitated to sign the death-warrant. She saw that the execution of the Scottish queen might be fraught with dangerous consequences to herself and the realm, and it was not her policy to make a perilous advance without having provided the means for a safe retreat. If she could only find some servant who, "upon the winking of authority could understand a law," her purpose would be better served. Mary would be secretly removed, and a scapegoat would be at hand to bear the sin, and, if needs be, the punishment due to it. On February the 1st, she signed the death-warrant, which had been placed before her among a number of other papers, and impressed upon Assistant Secretary Davison that she did not wish to be troubled further with that matter. Indeed she continued to complain of the lack of zeal in those who had joined the Association for her defence. She had done all, she said, that could be required of her by law or reason, and those who were interested in her welfare should relieve her of further responsibility. "Would it not be better for me," she remarked, "to risk personal danger than to take the life of a relation. But if a loyal subject were to save me from the embarrassment of dealing the blow, the resentment of Scotland and France might be disarmed." The prudence of those "loyal subjects" who preferred to leave the responsibility on her own shoulders, was amply vindicated immediately after the execution, when, in the futile endeavour to deceive the French and Spanish ambassadors, she visited Burleigh and other Ministers with temporary suspension from office, and cast Davison into the Tower, where she left him to languish for the remainder of her lifetime, because forsooth they had executed the death-warrant without her knowledge. Walsingham and Davison felt constrained, however, to write Sir Amias Paulet and Sir Drew Drury, whom the Queen thought should be ready to do her will, to point out to them the service their royal Mistress expected from them. "We find," they wrote, "by speech lately uttered by Her Majesty that she doth note in you a lack of that care and zeal of her service that she looked for at your hands, in that you have not in all this time of yourselves (without other provocation) found out some way to shorten the life of the Queen, considering the great peril she (Elizabeth) is subject unto hourly, so long as the said Queen shall live........