She used a gentler method with Lord Lindsay when he next showed her his rugged, shameless face. He told her bluntly that he would never bend the knee to Baal.
‘Well,’ she said, with a smile, ‘you shall bend it to me instead.’ And she looked so winning and so young, and withal so timid lest he should refuse, that (on a sudden impulse) down he went before her and kissed her hand.
‘I knew that I could make him ashamed,’ she said afterwards to Mary Livingstone.
‘I would have had him whipped!’ cried the flaming maid.
‘You are out, my dear,’ said Queen Mary. ‘’Twas better he should whip himself.’
Although she took enormous pains, she succeeded not nearly so well with her bastard brothers and their sister, Lady Argyll, the handsome, black-browed woman. James, Robert, and John, sons of the king her father, and Margaret Erskine, all alike tall, sable, stiff and sullen, were alike in this too, that they were eager for what they could get without asking. The old needy Hamilton—Duke of Châtelherault as he was—let no day go by without begging for his son. These men let be seen what they wanted, but they would not ask. The vexatious thing with their sort is, that you may give a man too much or too little, and never be sure which of you is the robber. Now, the Lord James greatly coveted the earldom of Moray. Would he tell her so, think you? Not he, since he would not admit it to his very self. She received more than a hint that it would be wise to reward him, and told him that she desired it. He bowed his acceptance as if he were obedient unto death.
‘Madam, if it please your Majesty to make me of your highest estate, it is not for me to gainsay you.’
‘Why, no,’ says the Queen, ‘I trow it is not. You shall be girt Earl of Mar at the Council, for such I understand to be your present desire.’
It was not his desire by any means, yet he could not bring himself to say so. Her very knowledge that he had desires at all tied his tongue.
‘Madam,’ he said, sickly-white, ‘the grace is inordinate to my merits: and, indeed, how should duty be rewarded, being in its own performance a grateful thing? True it is that my lands lie farther to the north than those of Mar; true it is that in Moray—to name a case—there are forces which, maybe, would not be the worse of a watchful eye. But the earldom of Moray! Tush, what am I saying?’