The Queen of Scots herself was of a gay and hopeful disposition, one which perhaps it required many reverses to steady and sober down. Plenty of them she sustained ere all was done! In the meantime her kind heart was moved to think that her maid-of-honour should have some secret grief she herself could not alleviate.
‘Tell me, dear,’ said she, ‘what it is that thus weighs upon your spirits, and takes the colour out of your cheek. I have seen it for long. Confide in me, not as your Queen, Mary Hamilton, but as your mother or your elder sister. I too am a woman, a failing, weak-hearted woman like the rest. I can only imagine one cause for such deep-rooted sorrow, and yet I cannot think my beautiful Hamilton should be in such a plight. Is it,’ and the Queen too looked confused while she asked the question, ‘is it some unfortunate—some unrequited attachment?’
The maid-of-honour blushed to her very temples, and the lustrous eyes that had been gazing fondly into the Queen’s face were lowered for an instant; but she raised them with an effort, and drawing herself up, with her colour deepening every moment, answered proudly—
‘Nay, madam; we Hamiltons have your own princely blood in our veins, and do not give our love unasked or unreturned. The Maries, too, follow their Queen’s example, and would deem it worse than unmaidenly to entertain a secret or unacknowledged preference. We hold our heads high, you know, madam, like our mistress.’
The Queen looked as if she did not quite agree with her, and was about to answer, when a soft strain of music rose from the Abbey garden, and arrested the attention of each lady as if by a charm. The casement was thrown open, and the night wind stole in, bearing with it the melodious tones of a lute struck by no unpractised hand, and the notes of a rich voice that each seemed to recognise simultaneously with mingled embarrassment and delight.
There was then a proverb current in Scotland, which the poet seemed to have embodied in the verses he now poured forth on a flood of harmony:—
‘The brightest gems in heaven that glow
Shine out from the midmost sky;
The whitest pearls of the sea below
In its darkest caverns lie.