Randolph bowed to the ground. He knew and appreciated the value of such a compliment, and whilst he saw in the giver’s frank countenance and cordial manner the sincerity of her good-will, his heart never smote him for the double part he was expressly sent there to play.
The Queen’s curiosity did not yet seem, however, to be thoroughly satisfied, and she questioned the ambassador with considerable minuteness as to the appearance and bearing of his foes. Randolph’s answers were marked by his usual tone of covert sarcasm; but she elicited no more from him than he had already detailed, save that the valise which he had lost contained in reality no papers of importance, or, indeed, any papers whatever, except a few private memoranda of his own—an announcement which seemed to clear Lord James’s brow from a load of care, while it created obvious disappointment on two or three other anxious faces.
The truth was, that Randolph, faithful to his own Queen in the faithless part which he enacted to another, was the bearer of certain instructions to Lord James, which were very different in tenor from the cordial letter he was charged by Elizabeth to deliver to her cousin. There was even yet a strong Catholic party about the court, to whom the possession of these despatches would have been an inestimable windfall; no less, indeed, than a foundation for a charge of treason against the Queen’s Protestant half-brother.
The attack, then, on Randolph and his companion, was prompted by nobler names than the Armstrongs and Elliotts, who lived by rapine on the borders; but their schemes had been baffled by the wily Englishman, who fought like a demon to preserve the valise, of which he was, in reality, utterly careless, and by that means led his assailants to believe that, in carrying it off, they had become possessed of a valuable prize.
‘I am charged by the Earl of Bothwell,’ said Randolph, at the conclusion of his narrative, ‘to present his unalterable duty to your Majesty. His lordship, not satisfied with extricating me from the sloughs of the “Debatable Land,” has sent his own henchman to conduct me safely to the capital.’
Mary started perceptibly, and the colour she could not entirely repress rose faintly to her cheek. Well did she know that her warden was thoroughly devoted to her interests, and that, in whatever intrigues he might be mixed, Bothwell’s loyalty was unshaken to his Queen. Perhaps she may have already asked herself whether it did not partake of that devotion which shed a halo over the days of chivalry. At all events, his sending his own henchman to the court, denoted some more than usual necessity for communicating with his sovereign; and Mary prepared to take her measures accordingly.
At that unhappy period, when not a day passed without the hatching of some plot, the development of some intrigue—when every man’s hand was against his neighbour, and noble preyed upon noble without scruple or remorse—even the Queen was obliged to remember that jealous eyes were on the watch for her every movement, and to practise dissimulation where dissimulation was alike unsafe and unworthy.
She turned to Mary Seton, who had been listening with an appearance of great amusement, and gave her some directions in a low voice, that even Randolph’s quick ear could not overhear.
The young lady curtseyed and withdrew, first casting a glance of considerable meaning at Mary Carmichael, who replied to it, by assuming as unconscious an air as was compatible with the red spot that burned in either cheek.
Walter Maxwell now found himself in the presence of the lady whom he had been determining so many long weeks that he would forget, and to see whom once more he had consistently abandoned his profession, and undertaken a long journey by sea and land. As is usually the case, the moment he had looked forward to, hardly repaid the anxiety of expectation. The maid-of-honour’s greeting was formal in the extreme, betraying a degree of coldness that seemed almost to argue aversion; and he was, of course, fool enough to be hurt and angry, instead of pleased and triumphant. Whoever saw a woman accost the man she loves with half the cordiality she displays to the merest acquaintance? On the contrary, she receives his greeting with a reserve that to any one else would be positive rudeness; and even when alone with him, preserves, for a space, a certain embarrassment in her womanly shame and fear, lest she should betray the tenth part of all she feels.