added the Queen, singing with all her gaiety of heart those lines from the old ballad of the Four Maries.
"And why not here, madam?" said the Earl with ardour; "give me but the guerdon you promised—a ribbon, a glove, a favour to flutter from my lance; and may I die the death of a faulty hound, if I do not make it ring like a mass-bell on the best coat-of-mail among us."
The head of the Earl's lance was close to the window, and the queen with her usual heedlessness, tied her laced handkerchief below its glittering point; and a sinister smile spread over the face of the English ambassador when he saw this incident, and thought how famously he would twist it up into one of those tissues of court scandal and gossip, which nightly he was wont to indite for the perusal of Elizabeth and her satellites, Cecil and Killigrew.
The Earl kissed his hand as he reined back his horse.
"Courage, brave Bothwell!" cried the gay Countess of Argyle; and all the ladies clapped their hands and cried, "A Bothwell!—a Bothwell!"
"Now, ho, for Hepburn!" exclaimed the Earl, spurring his beautiful charger. "Come on, Ormiston! and we will meet all yonder tall fellows in battle à l'outrance, if they will."
"I am right well content," growled the giant; "but whom shall I encounter—yonder grasshopper, d'Elboeuff?"
"I would give my best helmet full of angels to see him measure his length on the gravel, were it but to cure him of his pouncet-box and villanous perfumes," said Hepburn of Bolton; "but he is the queen's kinsman, and she may be displeased."
"Diabolus spit me!" said Ormiston, "if I care whether she is pleased or not. I will break one lance and his head together, if I can; for he styled me a Goth and a savage, last night, in his cups."
"And I will run one course with Darnley," said the Earl.