"Oh, no!" reiterated James, with a meaning glance, "I do not love the Lady Jane; only I would bathe in fire, bask in ice, do each and every impossibility woman's caprice could frame for trials to gain—but I talk wildly to a youthful sage. Say, most revered anchorite, wherefore doubt you my love to my pretty mistress?"
"Love!" exclaimed Richard; his eyes grew lustrous in their own soft dew as he spoke. "Oh, what profanation is this! And this you think is love! to select a young, innocent, and beauteous girl—who, did she wed her equal, would become an honoured wife and happy mother—to select her, the more entirely to deprive her of these blessings—to bar her out for ever from a woman's paradise, a happy home; you, who even now are in treaty for a princess-bride, would entice this young thing to give up her heart, her all, into your hands, who will crush it, as boys a gaudy butterfly, when the chase is over. Dear my lord, spare her the pain—yourself remorse; you are too good, too wise, too generous, to commit this deed and not to suffer bitterly."
A cloud came over James's features. The very word "remorse" was a sound of terror to him. He smote his right hand against his side, where dwelt his heart, in sore neighbourhood to the iron of his penance.
At this moment, sweeping down the near hill-side, came a gallant array of ladies and courtiers. The king even lagged behind; when near, he accosted Katherine, he spoke to the earl of Angus, to Mary Boyd, to all save the Lady Jane, who first looked disdainful, then hurt, and, at last, unable to straggle with her pain, rode sorrowfully apart. James tried to see, to feel nothing. Her pride he resisted, her anger he strove to contemn, her dejection he could not endure: and, when riding up to her unaware, he saw the traces of tears on her cheek, usually so sunny bright with smiles, he forgot everything save his wish to console, to mollify, to cheer her. As they returned, his hand was on her saddle-bow, his head bent down, his eyes looking into hers, and she was smiling, though less gay than usual. From that hour James less coveted the prince's society. He began a little to fear him: not the less did he love and esteem him; and more, far more, did he deem him worthy of the honour, the happiness he intended to bestow upon him.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE MARRIAGE
She is mine own;
And I as rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
SHAKSPEARE.
The threads were spun, warp and woof laid on, and Fate busily took up the shuttle, which was to entwine the histories of two beings, at whose birth pomp and royalty stood sponsors, whose career was marked by every circumstance that least accorded with such a nativity. A thousand obstacles stood in the way; the king, with all his fervour, hesitated before he proposed to the earl of Huntley to bestow his daughter, of whom he was justly proud, on a fugitive sovereign, without a kingdom, almost without a name. Fortune, superstition, ten thousand of those imperceptible threads which fate uses when she weaves her most indissoluble webs, all served to bring about the apparently impossible.
The earl of Huntley was a man of a plain, straightforward, resolved ambition. His head was warm, his heart cold, his purpose one—to advance his house, and himself at the head of it, to as high a situation as the position of subject would permit. In the rebellion which occasioned the death of James the Third, he had vacillated, unable quite to ascertain which party would prove triumphant; and when the rebels, rebels then no more, but lieges to James the Fourth, won the day, they looked coldly on their lukewarm partizan. Huntley grew discontented: though still permitted to hold the baton of Earl Marshal, he saw a cloud of royal disfavour darkening his fortunes; in high indignation he joined in the nefarious plot of Buchan, Bothwell; and Sir Thomas Todd, to deliver his sovereign into the hands of Henry of England, a project afterwards abandoned.