He dreamt of Anna; her upbraiding eyes were fixed on his, and he heard her voice like a confused murmur in his ear; every expression of her face was before him as of old, by turns tender and love-like, haughty and sad. Then her features changed, and rapidly as thought became those of his unhappy and almost forgotten Countess, in all her pallid beauty, her infantile smiles and black beseeching eyes. Anon they changed again, and, fading or altering into others, grew more and more like those of Mary the Queen, with her pure broad open brow, and deep dark thoughtful eye; her aquiline nose and haughty nostrils; her smiling mouth and dimpled chin. A sound awoke him.
He started, and arose to find the very face of which he dreamt before him; the same eyes and laughing little mouth, so full of archness and drollery.
It was, indeed, Mary the Queen, in her little lace coif, her velvet hood and ruff, her long diamond stomacher and longer fardingale, just as we see her in the old paintings at Holyrood. She was leaning on the arm of her sister, the stately Countess of Argyle; the Earl of Moray, Hob Ormiston, and French Paris, were grouped, with several ladies, a pace or two behind, and all were attentively regarding Bothwell, whose strong figure, cased in his close-fitting vest and velvet hose, seemed a model of manly symmetry and grace, as his features, dark, regular, and classic, did of that kind of beauty which we find in the pictures of the old Italians—the white and martial forehead, with its short black curly hair, the straight nose and jetty eyebrows, the curved mouth, and well-defined chin.
"Madame—Madame! is this a dream?" exclaimed Bothwell, starting from his couch, and, though giddy with debility, kneeling before her with a reverence almost unknown in the Scottish court since her father's days. "To what is my house of Hermitage indebted for the unmerited honour of this sudden visit? Have the Liddesdale thieves been at Jedburgh gates?"
"Oh, Jesu Maria!—no," said the Queen. "I hope that if all the Elliots came, and the Armstrongs too, that with Erskine's archer guard and the burgesses, we could have maintained yonder town, with its tall bastel-houses, till the lord warden sent his lances to our rescue."
"Then hath the English marshal of Berwick or his prickers dared"—began the Earl again, as with a kindling eye he looked round for his sword.
"Nay, nay, my dear Earl—thou thinkest ever but of blows and battle. Thou hast none other than thy dull-witted messenger to thank for a visit from all this good company."
"Pate of Prickinghaugh!"
"Ah, mon Dieu! the same," replied Mary, laughing at the name. "Well, this Maitre Preekinhaw brought us tidings that thou wert either dead or dying. So, setting out with a small train from Jedburgh, with my noble brother, the Earl, (here Bothwell, with an eye that was full of irony, exchanged a profound bow with Moray,) I rode hither, intent on learning in person the truth or falsity of this sad news; and that I might, if they were so, avenge on the whole sirname of Elliot, the loss of the only Scottish peer that would draw his sword at the command of his sovereign. So you see, Monseigneur Bothwell, that whatever the Protestants say of poor Mary Stuart, she is not ungrateful for service promptly rendered."
"Oh, Madame!" said the Earl, in a thick voice, as he clasped his hands, and bent his eyes on the ground; "you overpower me! I never deemed thee otherwise than something angelic, and such I find thee now."