‘Madam, I know few men save men of spirit, therefore I cannot advise you. But you know the saw, Come asino sape così minuzza rape: “The donkey bites his carrot as well as he knows.” Wisdom is becoming to a servant; kindness, generosity, and the rest of these high virtues are the ornament of a master, or mistress. Why, madam, if I desire the warmth of the sun, shall I ever get it by shivering? Is that a wise reflection?’
She clasped her hands over her knee, and looked at her foot as she swung it slowly; but if the action was idle the words were not. ‘If I asked you, my lord, to wear the dule with me upon this one day of the year, should you refuse me? If I grieve, will you not grieve with me?’
He never faltered, but spoke as gaily as a sailor to his lass. ‘Faith of a gentleman, madam, why should I grieve—except for that you should grieve still? For your grieving there may be a remedy; and as for me, far from grieving with you, I thank the kindly gods.’
She bit her lip as she shivered. ‘You are cruel,’ she said: ‘you are cruel. I knew it before. Your heart is cruel. This is the very subtlety of the vice.’
‘Not so, madam,’ he answered quietly; ‘but it is dangerous simplicity. Do you not know why I give thanks?—I think you do, indeed.’
Very certainly she thought so too.
She sat on after he was gone, twisting her fingers about as she spun her busy fancies; and was so found by her maids. Little King Francis and the purple pall which signified him were buried for that day; and after dinner she changed her black gown for a white. It was at going to bed that night that she had rallied Mary Livingstone about Scots lords and wise virgins, and declared that Lord Bothwell was nothing to her. And the maid believed her just as far as you or I may do.
Not that the thing was grown serious by any means: the maid of honour made too much of one possible lover, and the Queen, very likely, too little. The difference between these two was this: Mary Livingstone looked upon her Majesty’s lovers with a match-maker’s eye, but Queen Mary with a shepherding eye. The flock was everything to her. Just now, for example, she was anxious about certain other strays; and, as time wore on to the dark of the year, she began to be impatient. The Gordons, said her brother James, were playing her false; but it was incredible to her—not that they should be at fault, but that her instinct should be so. She could have sworn to the truth of that fine Lord Gordon, and been certain that she had won over old Huntly at the last. The mistake—if she was mistaken—is common to queens and pretty children, who, finding themselves in the centre of their world, give that a circumference beyond the line of sight. Because all eyes are upon them they think that there is nothing else to be seen. She was to learn that Huntly at Court and Huntly in Badenoch were two separate persons; so said the Lord James.
‘Sister, alas! I fear a treacherous and stiff-necked generation’; and he had more to go upon than he chose her to guess as yet.
So far, at least, she had to admit that old Huntly was a liar: John of Findlater was never brought back. Her messengers returned again and again, saying, ‘The Earl was in the hills,’ or ‘The Earl was hunting the deer,’ or ‘The Earl was punishing the Forbeses.’ And where was her fine Lord Gordon, with his sea-blue, hawk’s eyes? She was driven at last to send after him—a peremptory summons to meet her at Dundee; but he never came—could not be found or served with the letter—was believed to be with the Earl, his father, but had been heard of in the west with the Hamiltons, etc. etc. The face of Lord James—his eyes ever upon the Earldom of Moray—was sufficient answer to her doubts; and when she turned to Lord Bothwell for comfort, he laughed and said, reminding her of a former conversation, ‘Prick the old bladder, madam, scatter the pease; then watch warily who come to the feast.’