The Master chose to wait; and when the Court moved to Saint Andrews he waited in Fife.
The Court went thither with various great affairs in train, whose conduct throve in that shrill air. The Queen would work all the forenoon with Lethington and her useful Italian, play all the rest of the day, and to bed early. She played at housewifery: bib and tucker, gown pinned back, all her hair close in a clean coif. The life was simple, the air of homely keenness, the weather wintry; but the great fire was kind. All about her made for healthy tastes; inspired the hale beauty of a life within the allotted fence, a taskwork smoothly done, and God well pleased in His heaven. Lethington, a pliant man, lent himself to the Queen’s humour; Signior David was never known to be moody; there were Adam Gordon and Des-Essars to give their tinge of harmless romance—a thin wash, as it were, of water-colour over the grey walls. Sir James Melvill, too, who had been to England upon the high marriage question, and returned, and was now to go again, arrived, full of importance, for last words. It had come to this, that the Queen was now to choose a husband.
Sir James was struck by her modest air, that of a tutored maid who knows that she is called to matronhood. ‘Ecce ancilla Domini!’ In truth she was listening to those very words.
‘I shall strive in all things, Sir James Melvill, to please my good sister. Whether it be my Lord Robert[1] or my cousin Darnley, I trust I shall satisfy my well-wishers.’
Soft voice, lowly eyes, timid fingers! ‘Who has been pouring oil upon this beading wine?’ asked himself Sir James. Who indeed, but Saint Andrew, with his frosty sea-salt breath?
It was just at this time, as things fell out, that the Earl of Lennox, father to that ‘hopeful prince’ of Mary Fleming’s report, came to Scotland, as he said, upon a lawsuit concerning his western lands. But some suspected another kind of suit altogether; among whom, for the best of reasons, were the Queen’s brother James, and the Lord of Lethington the Secretary. Another was Signior David, dæmonic familiar of Monsieur de Châtelard.
[1] Lord Robert Dudley, later the too-famous Lord of Leicester.