A bright blush swept over the maid-of-honour’s forehead, but she paled again almost immediately as she replied—
‘I saw you from our window walking on the shore. I knew it was you, and I asked to bring the packet myself because they tell me you are going away to-night, and I was anxious to bid you farewell.’
This was a great deal for Mary Hamilton to say. No successful gallant could have wrung such an avowal from her lips; but the keen eye of affection had told her that Chastelâr was dejected and unhappy; so she longed to console him and speak kindly to him ere he went away.
Should he not have pitied her? He who knew what it was to love in vain? Of all women on earth he should have spared her; but the devil had entered into him and he saw in this pure, unselfish affection a way to his own object; so she, too, must be sacrificed without remorse. What did it matter? Was he alone to suffer and be trampled under foot?
‘It was good of you, Mistress Hamilton,’ he replied, with a soft glance from his dark eyes, that made her flush and tremble where she stood. ‘Few but yourself would have been so considerate, and I should have valued the kindness as much from none. Shall I leave one person at Court to regret me when I am gone?’
‘More than that,’ she answered, hurriedly, and scarce knowing what she said, ‘there will be no music for us now, at least none worth listening to. The Queen said so herself—and—and—are you not coming back again?’
‘Never!’ he replied, darkly; and then, seeing her scared and troubled face, adding, with a laugh, ‘Never is a long word, is it not? and who can tell in such a country as this what a few months may bring? But I shall be absent a weary while, Mistress Hamilton, and I cannot bear unkindness from those I love. I would not willingly be forgotten and supplanted by newer faces.’
Her eloquent eyes told him that was impossible, but she dared not trust herself to speak.
‘Will you think of me when I am gone?’ he proceeded, in a lower tone, and pressing nearer his companion’s side. ‘When you are feasting merrily at Holyrood, and enjoying dance and song and revelry, will you not keep one little corner in your heart for the absent who used to do all in his poor power to make your time pass pleasantly, who will be thinking every hour so sadly and longingly of you?’