‘I think she was glad to see me, as certainly was I to see her looking so hale and fresh. Her eyes were like wet stars; she kissed me twice at meeting, with lips which had regained their vivid scarlet, were cool but not dry. I hastened to excuse my Lord Bothwell on the score of affairs. “Yes, yes, I know how pressed he is,” she replied. “I know he would have come if it had been possible. He has sent me the best proxy by you.” I told her that my Lord Huntly would be here momently, but she made a pouting mouth and a little grimace—then looked slily at me and laughed.
‘I rehearsed faithfully my Lord Bothwell’s message, and could not see that she was particularly interested in the King’s actual lodging—though that is by no means to imply that she was not interested. It is due to say that I never knew any person in all my experience of Courts and policy so quick as she not only to conceal her thoughts, but also to foresee when it would behove her to conceal them. It was next to impossible to surprise her heart out of her.
‘She asked me eagerly for Edinburgh news. I told her that the Hamiltons were in their own house; the Archbishop there already, and my Lord of Arbroath expected every day. She said in a simple, wondering kind of a way, “Why, the Hamilton house is next neighbour unto the King’s, I suppose?”
‘“Madam,” I said, “it is. And so my Lord Bothwell bid me remind your Majesty.”
‘She laughed; a little confusedly. “Better the King should not know of it,” she said. “He hates that family, and fears them, too. But that is not extraordinary, for he always hates those whom he fears.”
‘She asked, was my lord of Morton in town? I replied that he was, with a strong guard about his doors and a goodly company within them, as Mr. Archibald Douglas of Whittingehame and his brother, Captain Cullen, Mr. Balfour of Fliske, and others like him, and also the laird of Grange. To him resorted most of the lords of the new religion; they, namely, of Lindsay, Ruthven, Glencairn, and Argyll. My lord of Bothwell, however, lodging in the Huntly house, had a larger following than the Douglases; for all the Hamiltons paid him court as well as his own friends. She did not ask me, but I told her that her brother, my Lord Moray, kept much to himself, and saw few but ministers of his religion, such as Mr. Wood and Mr. Craig, and Mr. Secretary Lethington, who (with his wife) was lodged in his lordship’s house, and worked with him every day.
‘She stopped me here by looking long at me, and then asking shortly, “Have you heard anything of my Lady Bothwell?” which confused me very much. I could only reply that I had heard she had been indisposed. “I am sorry to hear it,” said she in quite an ordinary tone, “and am sorry also for her, when she finds out that her sickness is not what she hopes it is. You have not seen her, I suppose?” I had not.
‘“I have seen her in illness,” she pursued. “It does not become white-faced women to be so, for to be pale is one thing, but to be pallid another. When the transparency departs from a complexion of ivory, the residuum is paste. I myself have not a high colour by nature: yet when I am ill, as I am now, I always have fever, and look better than when my health is better. Did you not think, when you saw me first this morning, that I looked well?”
‘I had thought she looked both beautiful and well, and told her so. She was pleased.