"I hope so!" she said.
"Dear madame," replied the Earl, in the same low, earnest voice; "you can neither deceive yourself nor me by these replies. The Lord Darnley is my foe; but you are aware that I speak more in a sentiment of dutiful love towards your majesty, than enmity to him who stirred up John of Park, and the whole clan Elliot, to slay me. On him thou hast sacrificed a love the bravest of our Scottish peers, and the proudest princes of Europe—Charles of France, Carlos of Spain, and the Archduke of Austria—have sued for in vain. Oh, madame!" continued the Earl, with pathos in his voice, while his cheek flushed and his eye kindled as he recalled the boyish love of his early day, when he had first seen Mary at the court of France. "I know that the human heart can love truly, fondly, and sincerely, but once—and once only. Let that love be blighted or crushed, and all future impressions are but fancies, to be begun with a smile and relinquished without a sigh. Oh, yes! there is an amount of love, of ardour, of agony, despair, that we feel but once, and then we become deadened and callous. Oh! who in a second love ever felt the same freshness, the same depth of anxiety, the same fear and hope and joy, that alternately filled his heart in the dawn of that first passion, that grew like a flower in Eden, and fills the whole creation with happiness, rendering us blind and oblivious of all save the object we love?"
"And since when has your volatile lordship known all this?" asked Mary, with her usual raillery.
"Madame, since I first beheld—thee!" replied the Earl; and, borne away by the gush of his old and long-cherished love, he sank on his knee, and pressed to his lips the hand of Mary, over whose fair brow and beautiful face a deep and crimson blush of anger passed, as the shadow of a summer cloud flits over a corn-field.
"Rise, my lord!" she said with a hauteur that froze her admirer. "Lord Bothwell, thou art in a dream!"
"It was, indeed, a dream," replied the Earl sadly, as he thought of the double vows that separated them for ever. "St. Bothan help me! a dream of other days, that can return no more! Oh, madame, I pray you, pardon me"——
"I do pardon thee," replied the Queen, with one of her calm smiles; but added, significantly, "I think 'tis time we were riding from Hermitage."
"So soon! after your escape—your fatigue—and when a storm is gathering? See, the peaks of Millenwood-fell and Tudhope-head are veiled in mist."
"This instant!" replied Mary, with one of those gestures which there was no disputing. "Jane, Lady Argyle, we are about to depart. Sir John Hepburn, summon our train."
"Permit me, madame, to accompany you. Ho!—French Paris—my armour!"——