‘Madam——’
‘Be silent.’
‘But, madam——’
Lethington, much agitated, whispered in her ear; she shook him away, stamped, clenched her hands.
‘You are dismissed, sir. The audience is finished. Do you hear me?’
‘How finished? How finished?’
‘Go, go, my lord, for God’s sake!’ urged the Secretary.
‘A pest!’ cried he, and fumed out of the Castle.
She rode down the Canongate to dinner that day at a hand-gallop, the people scouring to right and left to be clear of heels. Her colour was bright and hot, her hair streamed to the wind. ‘Fly, fly, fly!’ she cried, and whipped her horse. ‘A hateful fool, to dare me so!’ Lethington, Argyll, James her brother, came clattering and pounding behind. ‘She is fey! She is fey! She rides like a witch!’ women said to one another; but Mr. Knox, who saw her go, said to himself, ‘She is nimble as a boy.’ Publicly—since this wild bout made a great commotion in men’s thoughts—he declared, ‘If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me.’ Neither he nor his judgments were anything to her in those days; she heard little of his music, rough or not. And yet, just at that time, had she sent for him she could have won him for ever. ‘Happy for her,’ says Des-Essars, writing after the event, ‘thrice happy for her if she had! For I know very well—and she knew it also afterwards—that the man was in love with her.’