The Queen saw her brother for a few moments, and he in her what he desired to be sure of: eyes like dancing water, and about her a glow such as the sun casts early on a dewy glade. He had never known her so gentle, or so without wit; nor had she ever before kissed him of her own accord. Lady Argyll, his own sister, was with her, the swarthy, handsome, large woman.
‘You are welcome, brother James,’ Queen Mary said; ‘and now we’ll all be happy together.’
‘I shall believe it, having it from your Majesty’s lips,’ said he.
She touched her lips, as if she were caressing what had been blessed to her. ‘I think my lips will never dare be false.’
He said warmly, ‘There speaketh a queen in her own right!’ What need had he to see the Italian?
Now, for the sake of contrast, look for one moment upon that other great man, the Chancellor Morton, in his privacy. Booted and spurred, he plumped himself down in a chair, clapped his big hands to his thighs and stuck out his elbows. He stared up open-mouthed at his kinsman Archie, twinkling his eyes, all prepared to guffaw. Humour was working through the heavy face. ‘Well, man? Well, man? How is it with Cousin Adonis?’
Archie Douglas, scared at first, peered about him into all corners of the room before he could meet the naughty eyes. Catching them at last expectant, he made a grimace and flipped finger and thumb in the air. ‘Adonis! Hoots! a prancing pie!’
The Earl of Morton rubbed his hands together. ‘Plenty of rope, man, Archie! Plenty of rope for the likes of him!’
Des-Essars has a long piece concerning the official presentation of the two earls to the prince, which seems to have been done with as much state as the Scottish Court could achieve.
‘My Lord of Darnley’s mistake,’ he says, ‘was to be stiff with the wrong man. He was civil to the Chancellor, his cousin—where a certain insolence would have been salutary; he made him a French bow, and gave him his hand afterwards, English fashion. But to my Lord of Moray, a cruelly proud man, he chose to show the true blood’s consciousness of the base; and in so doing, the hurt he may have inflicted at the moment was as nothing to what he laid up for himself. It was late in the day to insist upon the Lord James’s bastardy. Yet——“Ah, my Lord of Moray! Servant of your lordship, I protest.” And then: “Standen, my gloves. I have the headache.” He used scented gloves as a febrifuge. “A prancing pie!” said Monsieur de Douglas in my hearing. Nevertheless, my Lord of Moray spoke his oration; very fine, but marred by a too level, monotonous delivery—a blank wall of sound—to which, for all that, one must needs listen. He was not a personable man; for his jaw was too spare and his mouth too tight. His flat brows, also, had that air of strain which makes intercourse uncomfortable. But he was a great man, and a deliberate man, and the most patient man I ever knew or heard of, except Job the Patriarch. So he spoke his oration, and left everybody as wise as they were before.’