Mary Seton laughed in his face.
‘Farewell!’ said she, with mischief gleaming from her eyes: ‘Farewell! our fellow-sufferer and Prince of Troubadours. As you are never likely to cross the seas again, be sure you take back with you to France nothing but what belongs to you. None of the hearts of us unfortunate maids-of-honour, for instance. They are prized in Scotland, I can tell you; and the Maries want at least as many as they have got amongst the five of them, you may be sure!’
‘And suppose I leave my own instead,’ answered Chastelâr, laughing, yet at the same time colouring—an embarrassment not unmarked by Mary Hamilton, who shot one eager glance at him, and turned her eyes away, blushing too; ‘suppose I must return to France, fair mistress, a loser by the exchange?’
‘We’ll have the palace swept and searched for the missing article,’ she answered, gaily. ‘I think I can promise you that the one who has got it won’t keep it. There, you needn’t look so shocked, Mistress Beton! You can’t guess which of the Maries has robbed our poor poet so mercilessly. It’s a sweet name, Mary, is it not? But don’t forget it rhymes to “vary.” And so, good luck to you, Chastelâr! and fare you well!’
‘Souvent femme varie, fol qui s’y fie,’ answered the poet, forcing a laugh, though a less acute observer than any one of the four might have noted that he was distressed at the turn their conversation had taken, and that the wilful girl’s shaft had been shot home. ‘Adieu, Mistress Carmichael,’ he added, as she, too, in her turn frankly bade him farewell; and then he passed on to Mary Hamilton, and paused for an instant, irresolute, before the dark-eyed maid-of-honour.
She did not offer him her hand as the others had done. She never lifted her looks to his face. Pale as she usually was, she turned paler than ever, and her cold, distant bearing would have almost seemed to infer that she was offended, and that her greeting was extorted from her as a duty of ceremony, rather than springing from the free impulse of friendship.
And yet he knew it was not so. Though scarcely so quick-sighted on such matters as women, even men have an intuitive perception that they are beloved. In either sex the consciousness produces a kindly feeling towards the worshipper, and it seems hard to deny a few gentle words where so much is ungrudgingly bestowed. Mistaken compassion! Perhaps the fiercest efforts of hate would be less cruel than this ill-judged lenity. It is like hanging out the beacon where it shall guide the bark on to the quicksand. It is like Varney counterfeiting Leicester’s whistle to lure Amy Robsart to destruction. When people pass spurious money in exchange for sterling gold, they find themselves ere long in the felon’s dock; but there is no law to punish the coiner who stamps a few false words with the royal die of truth, and pays them away unblushingly, for all the happiness and all the welfare of the poor fool he deceives.
‘You are going back to France,’ said Mary Hamilton, with a wonderfully composed countenance and steady lip. ‘It is your home—I wish you joy of your return.’
‘Nay,’ answered Chastelâr, his voice softening while he spoke. ‘You know how happy I have been in Scotland. How devoted I must always be to this court and this country. I must follow d’Amville to Paris for the present, but the one hope of my life will be that I shall soon return.’
He spoke truly enough; he even hoped the royal lady then employing all the fascinations of her manner on Morton and his kindred, might hear his last words and give him one responsive glance to carry with him into his banishment. In this he was disappointed. The Queen, seated at some distance from the group, and surrounded by her barons, was for the moment ‘every inch a Queen,’ and Chastelâr passed out of Holyrood, with Mary Hamilton’s ‘farewell’ warmer and more hopeful since his last words, to warn him (could, indeed, warning ever profit in such cases), that, in stretching for the rose he would never reach, he was trampling the poor violet ruthlessly beneath his feet.