‘This is the most terrible secret sorrow which broke her heart, and ends my plea for pity upon her who loved so fondly. My breath and strength are done; for I had them from her alone, and with her high heart’s death dies my book.’
Honest, ingenuous, loyal Des-Essars! seeing, maybe, but in a glass darkly; seeing, certainly, not more than half—thou wert right there. If thy mistress beat the woman at last, it was with her fading breath. She knew herself beaten to the dust by the man.
[9] Here I am bound to agree with Bothwell; for if Huntly wished to keep him from blood-guiltiness and knew that he could, why not have kept him and his kegs away altogether? One answer may be, of course, that Morton and his friends would never have stood in had Bothwell and his been ruled out.
[10] Des-Essars, plainly, was at work during the Queen’s captivity in England; and, as I judge, while the inquiry was being held in Westminster Hall in 1568.
CHAPTER IX
THE BRIDE’S TRAGEDY
The heart being an organ of which we have opinions more gallant than practical, Des-Essars should perhaps have judged wiselier that his Secret of Secrets was what broke the Queen’s spirit. There he had been right, for from this day onwards to the end of her throned life the tragedy is pure pity: she drifts, she suffers, but she scarcely acts—unless the struggles of birds in nets can be called acts. After her spirit went rapidly her animal courage; after that her womanly habit. She was like to become a mere tortured beast. And as I have no taste for vivisection, nor can credit you with any, I shall be as short as I can.
Silent all the long way home from wooded Crichton to the sea, it might seem as if she had been hardening herself by silent meditation for what she knew must take place. She saw nothing of Bothwell that night—she was not yet ready for him; but she did what had to be done with Mary Sempill.
When that loyal soul came late into the bedchamber to bid her good-night, she found her mistress in bed, calm and clear in mind. Forewarned in some measure, as she stooped over to kiss her, the Queen did not as usual put out her arms to draw her friend nearer, but lay waiting for the kiss, which hovered, as it were, above her; and before it could come she said, ‘Do you kiss me, Mary? Wait while I tell you something. I am to be married to my lord come the day after to-morrow.’