Positively, she was about to begin, but he implored her to lock up the box of mischief and secrete it somewhere.
‘Guard it for me, my dear,’ she said. ‘What else have I done in my fever?’
He told her, many hidden matters had been disclosed, as well of the King as of others. It was not for him to say that nothing was left unrevealed; only that he knew of nothing. She had spoken, for instance, of a token, and had pointed to where it lay. Her eyes sparkled as she flashed out her hand from under the bedclothes, holding forth a ring upon a chain. ‘Here it is! He gave it me himself, and fastened it upon me with a kiss.’
‘Ha!’ He was frightened. ‘Let me keep it safe for you, madam, until——’
‘Safe? Will they cut it from my body, think you? Never, never. You shall watch over my casket, but this is a part of me.’
He makes free to comment upon this episode. ‘And I confess,’ he says, ‘that I exulted in her constant noble courage, and found nothing amiss in it, that she had stooped from her high estate. Rather I held it matter for praise and excitation of the thought and sense. For, properly viewed, there is nothing of beauty more divine than holy humility, nor hath there ever been since once the Lord of Glory and Might bowed His sacred head.’
But when she would have had him devise with her fresh methods of concealment, dust-throwing, head-burying, and the like, he told her fairly that it was too late.
‘I am bold to assure your Majesty that there is no man nor woman about this Court that wots not throughly of your Majesty’s private affairs. And, madam, if Dolet, if Carwood, if Mistress Fleming and Mistress Seton talk to each other of them over the hearth, what think you can be hidden from my lord of Moray—to say not that he hath been constant at your bedside, and hath heard you cry verses?’
Pondering these fateful truths, suddenly she tired of shifts. ‘Well, then, come what may of it,’ she cried out, ‘let them whisper their fill. I have done with whispering.’
She said that she wished to sleep—had the maids in and composed herself to that end. About midnight she awoke terribly in pain; shivering, crying aloud that her hour was come, unable to turn. The doctors were called to her, all the house was broad awake. She began after a time to vomit blood, and so continued for a night, a day and a night, shaken to pieces and at her last gasp.