"Bravade as ye may," urged Kilmaurs, "'tis all a plot of the Guises; and such I will maintain it to be."
"Now, grant me patience to scorn this base calumny!" said Mary of Lorraine, growing alternately red and pale with anger; for though she coveted this post in her heart, she knew too well the danger of making an enemy of Arran. "Good, my lords; I have made no struggle for the regency, nor have ever ventured to compete with my cousin Arran."
"Madam," said Arran coldly, "what right could you have pled?"
"Right enough," replied the Queen, veiling her anger by a smile; "nor am I quite without precedents either."
"Indeed!" said Arran, while Kilmaurs twitched the velvet mantle of Cassilis, and smiled to see the train on fire; "will you please to state this right?"
"A mother's right to rear her tender offspring; and Heaven knows that thought engrossed my whole heart, after the death of my two sons at Bothesay, and of my late husband and beloved king."
"God sain him! God rest him in his grave at Holyrood!" muttered the loyal old Earl of Mar, raising his bonnet; "he was the father of the poor."
"Lord earl, I thank you," said Mary, whose eyes filled with tears, and whose daughter, on perceiving this emotion, gently stole her little hand within hers; "after his death, I might have urged the parliament to remember that Mary of Gueldres, the widow of James II., and Margaret Tudor, the widow of James IV., were both regents of Scotland; then why not I, Mary of Guise and Lorraine, widow of their descendant, James V.? Yet, I asked you not for this. I love my kinsman Arran; but I better love my little daughter—the child your monarch left me. Is it not so, my good Lord Regent?"
"It is, madam; you speak most fairly and truly," replied Arran, whose smile belied the admission.
"I call God and His blessed Mother to witness, if I had then a thought in the world, but to rear my babe, as I was reared by my father, René of Lorraine, a good Catholic, and to guard her from the intrigues of those who would destroy the liberties of her country and her hope of salvation, by giving her in marriage to the heretic son of a heretic king."