"Will you? I must be careful what I say to you then, or I may run the risk of losing my own credit."
Mr. Lindsay spoke this half-jestingly, half in earnest. They went over to the palace.
"Is this very old, Sir?" asked Ellen.
"Not very; it has been burnt, and demolished, and rebuilt, till nothing is left of the old Abbey of King David but the ruins of the chapel, which you shall see presently. The oldest part of the House is that we are going to see now, built by James Fifth, Mary's father, where her rooms are."
At these rooms Ellen looked with intense interest. She pored over the old furniture, the needlework of which she was told was at least in part the work of the beautiful Queen's own fingers; gazed at the stains in the floor of the bed-chamber, said to be those of Rizzio's blood; meditated over the trap- door in the passage, by which the conspirators had come up; and finally sat down in the room, and tried to realize the scene which had once been acted there. She tried to imagine the poor Queen and her attendant and her favourite Rizzio, sitting there at supper, and how that door, that very door, had opened, and Ruthven's ghastly figure, pale, and weak from illness, presented itself, and then others; the alarm of the moment; how Rizzio knew they were come for him, and fled to the Queen for protection; how she was withheld from giving it, and the unhappy man pulled away from her, and stabbed with a great many wounds, before her face; and there, there! no doubt, his blood fell!
"You are tired; this doesn't please you much," said Mr.
Lindsay, noticing her grave look.
"Oh, it pleases me very much?" said Ellen, starting up; "I do not wonder she swore vengeance."
"Who?" said Mr. Lindsay, laughing.
"Queen Mary, Sir."
"Were you thinking about her all this while? I am glad of it. I spoke to you once without getting a word. I was afraid this was not amusing enough to detain your thoughts."