"Dost thou know, Marquis," whispered the irritated Earl, loudly enough to be heard by all; "that to me there seemeth something intensely despicable in such a baron as I, who can muster five thousand horse, being arraigned before a woman, like a rascally page or a chamber wench?"
"Certainement—and I before my little niece! Milles tonneres!" replied the Marquis, pulling up his ruff, which was all bristling with whalebone.
"I feel at this moment a profound veneration for thy musty old Salique law, which"——
"Peste! here comes her majesty the Queen!" interrupted the Frenchman, bowing till the point of the long toledo tilted up his mantle at an angle of forty-five degrees.
Dressed in plain black velvet, slashed at the bosom and shoulders with white satin, having her long train borne by the ladies Mary Fleming and Mary Beatoun, with a long lace veil floating from her stately head, a little close ruff under her chin, and the order of the Thistle sparkling on her neck, Mary entered, and with a graceful inclination of her head and a bright smile to all—looking more like the queen of some fair clime of love and song than of fierce and fanatical Scotland—swept up to the throne and took her seat under its purple canopy, while her ladies and their pages retired a little behind it.
Then only in her twenty-fourth year, Mary seemed fresh and blooming as the Venus Celestis of the ancients; for she had just come from her morning bathing, in the little turreted bath that still remains at the western corner of the royal garden; and where tradition asserts that she bathed in white wine; but a pure and limpid spring yet wells up beneath the floor, to contradict the legend.
She was accompanied by Darnley, whose magnificent doublet of cloth of gold was gleaming with jewels and seed pearls; but his face was pale, and his eyes were languid, bloodshot, and restless: his scarf was torn; his plumes were broken; something very like a female coif was hanging from a slash in his trunk breeches; and it was evident that he had been rambling with other debauchees the livelong night. Several gentlemen of the Lennox accompanied him, and as they entered somewhat unceremoniously, brushed past Bothwell and d'Elboeuff; but the former grasped one by the mantle, saying—
"Mahoud! fellow, dost thou take us for Lennox lairds? Back, sir! we hold our fiefs by knights' service, not by pimp tenure."
Between the hostile and intriguing spirits who crowded that gloomy chamber, many a deep, dark scowl was furtively exchanged.
Darnley, who was perfumed to excess, and carried a pouncet-box, bestowed all his attention, as usual, on Mariette Hubert, a maid of honour, and darkly and fixedly the lieutenant of the archers watched his insidious attentions. Darnley bent malignant eyes on Bothwell, who, in bravado, wore the well-known scarlet mantle; and Bothwell and Konrad were scowling at each other in turns; for the former felt no small dread of a dénouement, by which he might lose for ever that which was only dawning upon him, and under the sunshine of which he had begun to cherish, in secret, such daring and alluring hopes—the favour of the queen.