"Once," she repeated mournfully; "well, be it so. I promise—at this hour, then; but away while all around us is so quiet and still—take this pass, and leave me to my own ingenuity for the rest."
Bolton wrapped himself in the mantle, and drew the broad Spanish hat over his face.
"Ah, mon Dieu! La Fram and Duval will never be deceived!" said Mariette, with anguish, as she surveyed his towering figure.
"Trust to me and the gloom of this autumnal night. To-morrow, then—at the Rood Chapel—remember!" said Hepburn, taking her hands in his, and pausing irresolutely, until impelled by that old regard which, when once kindled in the human heart, can never wholly die, he drew her towards him, and kissed her; but with more calm tenderness, and with less of passion, than ever he had done in other days.
"Go, go!" said Mariette, in a choking voice, "I deserve not this honour from thee. Guilty have I been, and false; but St. Mary be my witness that I speak the truth—I was besieged, betrayed, and dazzled by the artful king; the rest was fear, despair, and frenzy all!"
She pressed her hands upon her bosom, as if it was about to burst.
"I can conceive all that now, Mariette," replied Hepburn, in the same broken voice, while he pressed her to his heart; "from my soul I forgive thee, as thou hast done me, the greater, the more awful ill, I meditated against thee."
They separated; but he had lingered so long, and time had fled so fast, that midnight tolled from the spire of the old abbey church before he had shown the pass bearing the forged signature of James, Regent, to the drowsy javellour, or gateward, avoided the sentinels at the outer porch, and issued into the palace gardens, from which, by scaling a wall, he easily made his way to the bare and desolate Calton.
At the east end of the hill there then lay many deep pits, overgrown with whin and bushes; deep, dangerous, and half-filled with water, the haunt of the hare and fuimart. These were known as the Quarry Holes, and were often the scene of a ducking for sorcery, and legal drowning for various crimes; and to these he fled for shelter and concealment; for though hundreds would gladly have afforded him both on his own barony of Bolton, which was only eighteen miles distant, and had been gifted to the (as yet unsuspected) secretary Maitland—there was not a man in Edinburgh but would instantly have surrendered him into the hands of the civil authorities—and to that punishment awarded him as Bothwell's abettor in the death of the Lord Darnley.
There, overcome by long deprivation of sleep, and the bitterness of his thoughts for many a weary night and day, a deep slumber fell upon him, and the noonday sun of the morrow had soared into the wide blue vault of heaven, ere he awoke to consciousness and a remembrance of where he was—the fate from which he had escaped—the existence and the last devotion of Mariette.