‘Nay, madam,’ urged Moray, with soothing accents, ‘bethink you, I beseech your Grace. In the name of prudence and discretion, bid me not dip my hands in the blood of this man. Remember, you have yourself treated him with over-courtesy and kindness, to the offence of your nobility, and, pardon me for saying it, to the scandal of the Court. Reflect, madam, what shall the world think of it when they hear that a queen’s musician was found in a queen’s bed-chamber, and put to death lest he should tell the tale.’
The Queen raised her head with flashing eyes.
‘You dare to shield him, Moray! You! my own blood!’ she vociferated. ‘On your allegiance, I charge you. What! You will never let him speak! To the death with him on the spot!’
But Moray knew the pliant and forgiving nature of her with whom he had to deal.
‘Nay, madam,’ said the prudent earl, ‘patience; I entreat you, patience; the unhappy man is clearly distraught; let us not shed his blood unwittingly. He shall be brought to justice, and punished according to his deserving; so shall his treason be sufficiently expiated by death. Remove him,’ he added, speaking composedly to the men-at-arms, who crowded round the door. ‘Bind him forthwith, and let him be placed securely in ward.’
Chastelâr still remained perfectly immovable; never once had he taken his eyes off the Queen’s face; never once had the strange longing, loving gaze, with its dash of wild triumph and its depth of intense affection, faded or varied for an instant. While they bound him fast, drawing a girdle tight round his arms above the elbow, he neither seemed to feel the pressure, nor to be conscious of the indignity; while they pressed round him and hustled him from the room, his looks never strayed for an instant from the Queen.
All this Mary Hamilton saw as if in a trance. Though every stroke of her pulse beat with a loud stupefying clang upon her brain, she knew that this was reality, that this was truth, that there was no hope of awaking to find it all a dream; but when Chastelâr reached the door, and beholding the Queen no longer seemed roused to consciousness at last, she met his eye for the first time, and the whole hopeless misery of her situation rushed upon her at once.
He smiled on her very sadly and kindly; there was a pitying, remorseful expression in his face—a wistful, mournful tenderness in his glance: she could bear it no longer, and she fainted dead away upon the floor.