He was dreadfully moved, leaned ardently towards her. ‘Madam! madam! You know my heart—I have never hid it from you. You talk of pity. Why, is not the piteous heart acquaint with pitifulness? Ah, then pity me! Let me serve you.’
Then her ague ceased, and she looked at him full, with brimming eyes. ‘Take me up to him, Huntly. I cannot bear myself.’
The fine colour flushed him. ‘Come, madam; I will take you.’
She followed him up the stair—and the Earl of Moray’s eyes followed her.
Here is one difference between imagination and fancy, that the first will leap full-fledged into the life of the upper air from the egg of its beginning, while the second crouches long callow in the nest, and must be fostered into plumage before it can take its pretty flights. Here, of these two who had been separate for a week, she had flown far beyond the man’s wayfaring, and stood upon a height which he could scarcely hope to see. To keep touch with her might call for all his wit. For what had actually passed between them but a couple of snatched kisses in the dark? No more, upon his honour, to his sense. For though he had built upon them a fine castle—with the bricks of Spain—he would have been the first to own himself a fool for so doing. But she! Not only had she reared a fair solid house of chambers and courts, but she had lived with him in it, a secret life. Here she had had him safe since the hour he left her in the garden. In her thought he was bound to her, she to him, by sacraments; they were, like all lovers, of eternal eld. No beginning and no end will love own up to. It is necessary to remember this.
Therefore, while he made an effort to get up from the bed on which he lay strapped, she had prevented him by running forward and kneeling lover-wise by his side. As she had hoped, she was now lower than he, nearer the floor; thence she had looked searchingly in his face, but said nothing, too full of love, too bashful to begin. The Countess stood at the bed-head, her brother Huntly drooped at the foot. The Queen had no eyes for them.
‘Speak to me of your welfare—assure me. I have been in great grief.’
To this he could only stammer some words of thanks, not perceiving yet by any means on what side to take her. But she would have none of his thanks.
‘You must speak to me, for I have dreamed deeply of this hour. Ah, how they have stricken you!’ She touched his bandages, lingering about that one upon his head as if she could not leave it alone. ‘Oh, curious knife, to search so deep! Oh, greedy Park, to take so much! But I think I should have taken more—had I been wiser.’
‘Rise, madam, rise,’ he said, ‘or I must rise. I may not see you kneeling.’