The queen's brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray, on seeing Darnley's inattention, had approached and drawn off his leather glove; but on hearing Bothwell summoned thus, he drew back with a smile on his lip, and a shade on his open brow. He bore a deadly enmity to Bothwell, whom he had more than once accused of designs against his life, and one deep glance of tiger-like import was exchanged between them, as the favoured courtier took Mary's snow-white hand in his, and led her to the hall door, where, between the marshalled ranks of a band of archers, and surrounded by the ladies of her court, with all their jewellery and embroidery glittering in the sunlight, she swept gracefully from that lofty chamber, and the heavy arras, which fair Queen Margaret had worked in the hours of her widowhood, closed like a curtain over the pageant as it passed away.
Mary, accompanied by her sister, the Countess of Argyle, Bothwell's sister-in-law, Elizabeth, Countess of Athole, and other ladies of rank, and attended by the handsome Earl, with his gay friend the Marquis d'Elboeuff, and Monsieur le Crocq, whom, as Frenchmen, he preferred to the morose and turbulent nobles of the court, promenaded among the terraces, the blooming parterres, and green hedgerows of the palace garden, through the leafy openings of which bright glimpses were obtained of the blue loch, with its shining bosom, dotted by white swans and dusky flocks of the water-ouzel.
The singing of birds filled the air with music, as the parterres did with perfume. All the flowers of summer were in their glory, and the white and purple lilac, with the golden blossoms of the laburnum, drooped over them. The sky was clear, and all of a deep cerulean blue, and in its sunshine the tints of the distant hills were mellowed to hues of the sapphire and the amethyst.
The spirits of the queen (freed from the cares of her troublesome state, and the thrall of her capricious husband) became buoyant with that delight so natural to her; and then her Parisian gaiety, the splendour of her wit, and the winning vivacity of her manner, came forth in all their power.
Her eyes alternately swam and sparkled with joy; her cheek flushed; and her merry laugh rang like music in the ear of Bothwell, who walked by her side.
A spell had fallen upon him!
With every wish to excel in her eyes, and to surpass himself in the art of conversation and gallantry, he found every attempt at either almost futile. An incubus weighed upon him; he was sad, irresolute, and anxious. Sad, because this interview with the beautiful Mary, had called up all the first hopes of his heart from the oblivion to which he had committed them; for many a year ago, when, in the first flush of her girlhood, he had dared to love the betrothed bride of Francis II. with the same deep and passionate fondness that drove Chatelard to destruction, and young Arran to madness: irresolute, because he dared not now to nourish such sentiments, yet found the impossibility of repressing them: and anxious, because the memory of his double matrimonial engagement pressed hardly and uneasily on his mind.
He strove to crush his rash thoughts and bitter regrets; but they would come—again and again.
He endeavoured to converse with the ladies of new coifs and Florence kirtles—to the French ambassador of the policy of Charles IX.—to the Marquis d'Elboeuf of the intrigues of Catherine de Medicis and Margaret of Valois—to Huntly of Moray's wiles and Morton's villanies; but he invariably found himself where he was before—by the side of Mary, listening to her musical voice, and gazing, with his old feeling of adoration, on her bright and sunny eyes, and her braided hazel hair, that gleamed in the noonday's sunshine.
And now, incited by the lingering love of other days, the demons of a more dangerous ambition than he before had ever dared to dream of, began for the first time to pour their insidious whispers in his ear, and Bothwell found that he was——lost.