Elle pour son honneur vous doibt obeyssance,
Moy vous obeyssant j’en puis recevoir blasme,
N’estant, à mon regret, comme elle, vostre femme.
She wrote, and believed, that she grudged Lady Bothwell nothing:
Je ne la playns d’aymer done ardamment
Celuy qui n’a en sens, ny en vaillance,
En beauté, en bonté, ny en constance
Point de seconde. Je vis en ceste foy.
‘God pity this poor lady!’ Des-Essars bursts forth, having been imparted these outrageous lines. ‘She who could believe that my Lord Bothwell was without peer in beauty, kindness, and constancy, might very well believe that she herself was not jealous of his wife.’
Jealous or no, it was jealousy of a strange kind. When her beloved answered his summons by attending her at Craigmillar, she received him with a dewy gratefulness which went near to touch him. ‘You have come, then! Oh, but you are good to your friend,’—a speech which for the moment bereft him of speech. She asked after the Countess, spoke of her as her sister, pitied her sitting alone at Hermitage, and inspired the gross-minded man with enthusiasm for her exalted mood.