"See to it, that none of the Darnley faction get possession of the brat,—keep him safe, or strangle him at once."
On the next day the Earl of Bothwell left Sterling, and it was whispered that he had been banished from court through the influence of the English ambassador; but conjecture was lost in astonishment, and when, two days after, the court at Sterling was broken up, and the queen, while on her way to Edinburgh, was met by Bothwell, with a force of eight hundred men, and conveyed to Dunbar by seeming violence, men stood aghast at the news; but those who had marked their queen closely during the few preceding days, concurred in the belief that she privately sanctioned the disgraceful outrage.
It was a gloomy and ancient pile—that in which Bothwell had left his deserted wife. In one of its apartments, beside a huge fire-place, in which a few embers smouldered in a sea of ashes, sat an old and wrinkled woman, spreading her withered palms for warmth, and occasionally turning a wistful look to the narrow windows, against which the rain and sleet were beating with real violence. As she listened, the tramp of approaching horses was heard in the court below, and before she had time to reach the door, it was flung open, and the Countess of Bothwell, dripping with wet and tottering with fatigue, flung herself into the arms of her old nurse.
"Sorrow on me," exclaimed the good woman, striving to speak cheerful, "how the child clings to my neck!—look up, lady-bird, and do not sob so—I know but too well how thy journey has speeded—may the curses of an old woman rest——"
"Oh, Mabel, Mabel, do not curse him—do not—we cannot love as we will," exclaimed the poor countess, clinging to the bosom of the old woman, as if to bribe her from finishing the anathema.
"Hush, darling, hush," replied old Mabel, pressing her withered lips fondly to the pure forehead of her foster-child—"he who could help loving thee——but hist, what is all this tramping in the court?—sit down, and I will soon learn."
The old woman divested the trembling young creature of her wet cloak and proceeded to the hall. After a few minutes absence she returned dreadfully agitated; her sunken eyes glowed like live coals, and her bony fingers were clenched together as a bird clutches her prey.
"My own darling," she said in a voice which she vainly strove to render steady, "I had thought not to have given his cruel message, but——"
"Speak on," said the poor young creature, raising her large eyes with the expression of a scared antelope, "I can bear any thing now."