‘A woman might have worse help at her need than the Lord Warden in jack and morion, with a score of those daring borderers at his back,’ retorted the staunch little partisan, following out, it may be, some wandering fancy of her own.
The Queen did not seem loth to pursue the subject.
‘You were talking of looks,’ said she, ‘not sword-strokes; and Bothwell, at his best, was bronzed and marred and weather-beaten, and built more like a tower than a man.’
‘That was exactly what I admired in him,’ interposed the damsel; ‘I even thought that scar over his eye became his face as it would have become none other.’
The Queen smiled once more, and resumed, in the tone of one who is looking far back into the past—
‘He certainly had more of the warrior than the courtier in him, and doubtless he hath always done his part well and knightly in the field; I will do him that justice. Poor Bothwell! he must have been ill-advised indeed when he could refuse to obey me. I thought I could have trusted him if all Scotland besides had failed me. Well, well! all must be forgiven now—and forgotten.’
She spoke the last words in a melancholy tone, and each relapsed into silence, for both the Queen and her damsels seemed to have ample food for thought; so their fingers flew over the tapestry more nimbly than ever, and the work proceeded with extraordinary perseverance till supper-time.
But if Darnley had been pleasant to look at in his travel-stained riding-gear, the most fastidious eye must have admitted that he was indeed splendidly handsome when he appeared, prepared to perform the menial offices of the Queen’s supper-table, clad in a suit of gorgeous apparel, cut in the newest fashion of the English Court. Refreshed with food and repose, sleek from the bath and perfumes of his toilet, radiant with hope and excitement, the young courtier stood before his sovereign probably the best dressed and the best looking man that day in her dominions.
After he had gone through the form of presenting Mary with the basin and ewer, which she declined, she bade him sit down at the same table with herself and her ladies, for the Queen disliked ceremony, and always dispensed with it in private to the utmost. Then did Lord Darnley strain every nerve to be agreeable, and with so partial an audience, it is needless to say, succeeded beyond his highest expectations. Skilled in those outward graces which make so good a show and are so effective in society, it was an easy task to him, even in the presence of royalty, to lead the conversation round to those topics on which he was best qualified to shine.
His descriptions of his journey, his humorous account of the difficulties he experienced in procuring horses at the different posts, with a covert allusion here and there to his impatience to get on, were listened to with laughter and interest by all—with rising colour and heaving breast by one; while in no circle probably of either kingdom could his graphic sketch of the English Court, with its petty intrigues and latest scandal, have been appreciated with such thorough zest and good-will.