Full of ardour, as this new ray of hope dawned upon him at a time so opportune, the Earl was more eloquent even than the subtle secretary; but the morning sun shone through the barred windows, as red amid October clouds he rose above Soltra edge, ere they came to a decision; and the Earl of Moray, and Lethington, the Machiavel of Mary's court, undertook to urge the measure upon her with all their eloquence and skill. Bothwell, with proper delicacy, and policy too, declined being one of the deputation, for whose success he would have prayed, had he not forgotten the way, in these days of reformation and misrule.
They left the apartment on their mission, for the queen was now up, and said to be walking in the castle garden, where she daily offered food to four stately swans that floated on the lake, which, in the form of a gigantic P, (the first letter of Preston, the baron's name,) occupied one half of the ground. It is still distinctly traceable to the southward of the ruins, and was then supplied by the same springs that filled the moat on the north.
Bothwell leaned against a window, watching the sunrise, and he could hear his own heart beating. Exhausted by illness, and the fatigue of the conference, Argyle, after his page had given him a drink of ptisan from a silver cup, had fallen sound asleep. Huntly, perplexed and full of bitter thoughts, turned over the leaves of an old brass-bound and wooden-boarded tome—The Chronicle of ye novel and valiant Earle of Flanders quho married the Devil; and he lay back, half-hidden in the deep recess of the tower window, and never once addressed his brother-in-law, to whose ambitious aspirations, and open neglect of his beautiful sister, he was now no stranger. And thus, though his eyes were on Jehan Trepperel's black-letter pages, it was perfectly apparent, by his knitted brows and sullen silence, that his thoughts were elsewhere.
The sun soared high in the blue vault; white as snow the morning mists rolled up from the dell that was traversed by Lothian burn, on the margin of which, a little hamlet of neatly ornamented cottages had been built for the French attendants of Mary; and these, though changed in aspect, are still known as Little France. The pale smoke ascended in columns into the pure air from the village of Niddry Mareschal, which, with its chapel, dedicated to the Holy Virgin by Wauchope, baron of Niddry, nestled among the brown autumnal copsewood to the east. The woods of Edmiston were bare and yellow; and the hill on which the lords of Craigmillar had reared up their strong square tower of the twelfth century, was arid with whins, and gloomy with clumps of the dark Scottish fir.
The time, and importance of the circumstances under which he viewed it, deeply impressed every feature of that morning landscape on the Earl's memory. His fate, and that of Scotland too, hung perhaps upon the queen's decision; and love and pride, ambition to achieve, and revenge to gratify, all kindled a glow of anxiety in his bosom, that amounted to torture.
Slowly the minutes passed on!
An hour wore away; he thought they would never reappear. Argyle still slept, and Huntly had at last become absorbed in the pages of "The Valziant Earle;" for, thanks to the tutorship of old Gavin Dunbar, he could read a little.
At last the deputation returned; Huntly closed his book, Argyle woke up, and Moray gave one of his cold and mild smiles on seeing Bothwell's paleness and anxiety.
"She hath consented, sirs?" he asked in a breathless tone.
"Nay, my lord, she declined so peremptorily that we felt our heads shake on our shoulders," replied the secretary; "and, by the rood! I never knew my statecraft and natural oiliness of tongue so far fail me in doing service to myself and friends. So here endeth all hope of a divorce; for, though King Henry hateth and feareth her, as a burnt child doth the fire, and though she wept bitterly—yea, like an abandoned Dido, at his coldness and cruelty, and small love for her—she avows that she will rather die than divorce him."