CHAP X when he gave his message did not hide from her that his master was afraid of her.

1567 January

at her husband's bedside.

There is no remedy against fear,' the Queen said shortly.

'Madam,' Crawford answered, 'I know so far of my master that he desires nothing more than that the secrets of every creature's heart were writ in their faces."

Crawford's suspicions were too evident to be concealed. The Queen did not like them; she asked sharply if he had more to say; and when he said he had discharged his commission, she bade him 'hold his peace.'

Lord Darnley had made some use of his illness; as he lay between life and death he had come to understand that he had been a fool, and for the first time in his life The Queen had been thinking seriously. When the Queen entered his room she found him lying on his couch, weak and unable to move. Her first question was about his letter; it was not her cue to irritate him, and she seemed to expostulate on the credulity with which he had listened to calumnies against her. He excused himself faintly. She allowed her manner to relax, and she inquired about the cause of his illness.

A soft word unlocked at once the sluices of Darnley's heart; his passion gushed out uncontrolled, and with a wild appeal he threw himself on his wife's forgiveness.

'You are the cause of it,' he said; 'it comes only from you who will not pardon my faults when I am sorry for them. I have done wrong, I confess it; but others besides me have done wrong, and you have forgiven them; and I am but young. You have forgiven me often, you may say; but may not a man of my age for want of counsel, of which I am very destitute, fall

1 Crawford's deposition.-MS. Rolls House.

your

hus

1567 January

twice or thrice and yet repent and learn from experience. CHAP X Whatever I have done wrong forgive me; I will do so no more. Take me back to you; let me be band again, or may I never rise from this bed. it shall be so,' he went on with wild eagerness; knows I am punished for making my God of you-for having no thought but of you."

Say that

God

He was flinging himself into her arms as readily as she could hope or desire; but she was afraid of exciting his suspicions by being too complaisant. She answered kindly that she was sorry to see him so unwell; and she asked him again why he had thought of leaving the country.

He said that he had never really meant to leave it; yet had it been so there was reason enough; she knew how he had been used.'

She went back to the bond of Craigmillar. It was necessary for her to learn who had betrayed the secret, and how much of it was known.

Weak and facile as usual Darnley gave up the name of his informant; it was the Laird of Minto; and then he said that he could not believe that she who was his own proper flesh would do him harm;' if any other would do it,' he added with something of his old bravado, 'they should buy him dear unless they took him sleeping.'

Her part was difficult to act. As she seemed so kind, he begged that she would give him his food; he even wished to kiss her, and his breath after his illness was not pleasant. 'It almost killed me,' she wrote to Bothwell, though I sate as far from him as the bed would allow he is more gay than ever you saw him; in fact he makes love to me, of the which I

:

1 Crawford's deposition. The conversation, as related by Darnley to Crawford, tallies exactly with that given by Mary herself to Bothwell in the casket letters.

CHAP X take so great pleasure that I enter never where he is but incontinent I take the sickness of my sore side which I am so troubled with."

1567

January

When she attempted to leave the room he implored her to stay with him. He had been told, he said, that she had brought a litter with her; did she mean to take him away?

She said she thought the air of Craigmillar would do him good; and as he could not sit on horseback she had contrived a means by which he could be carried.

The name of Craigmillar had an ominous sound. The words were kind, but there was perhaps some odd glitter of the eyes not wholly satisfactory.

He answered that if she would promise him on her honour to live with him as his wife and not to leave him he would any more, go with her to the world's end, and care for nothing; if not he would stay where he was. It was for that purpose, she said tenderly, that she had come to Glasgow; the separation had injured both of them, and it was time that it should end; and so she granted his desire and promised it should be as he had spoken, and thereupon gave him her hand and faith of her body that she would love him and use him as her husband;' she would wait only till his health was restored; he should use cold baths at Craigmillar, and then all should be well.

Again she returned to his letter; she was still uneasy about his knowledge of the bond, and she asked whether he had any particular fear of either of the noblemen. He had injured Maitland most, and he shivered when she named him. He felt but too surely with what indifference Maitland would set his heel on such a worm as he was.

1 Mary Stuart to Bothwell.-ANDERSON's Collection.

She spoke of Lady Reres, Bothwell's evil friend. CHAP X Darnley knew what that woman had been and suspected what she might be. He said he liked her not, and January wished to God she might serve the Queen to her honour; but he would believe her promise, he would do all that she would have him do, and would love all that she loved.

She had gained her point; he would go with her, and that was all she wanted. A slight cloud rose between them before she left the room. He was impatient at her going, and complained that she would not stay with him: she on her part said that he must keep her promise secret; the lords would be suspicious of their agreement, and must not know of it,

He did not like the mention of the lords; the lords, he said, had no right to interfere; he would never excite the lords against her, and she, he trusted, would not again make a party against him.

She said that their past disagreements had been no fault of hers. He, and he alone, was to blame for all that had gone wrong.

With these words she left him. Mary Stuart was an admirable actress; rarely perhaps on the world's stage has there been a more skilful player. But the game was a difficult one, she had still some natural compunction, and the performance was not quite perfect.

relates to

Darnley, perplexed between hope and fear, affection Darnley and misgiving, sent for Crawford. He related the con- Crawford versation which had passed, so far as he could recollect his conver it, word for word, and asked him what he thought.

Crawford, unblinded by passion, answered at once that he liked it not;' if the Queen wished to have him living with her why did she not take him to Holyrood? Craigmillar-a remote and lonely country

sation with the Queen.

CHAP X house was no proper place for him; if he went with 1567 her he would go rather as her prisoner than her husJanuary band.

The Queen in her cabinet.

Letter to

Bothwell.

Darnley answered that he thought little less himself; he had but her promise to trust to, and he feared what she might mean; he had resolved to go however; 'he would trust himself in her hands though she should cut his throat."

And Mary, what was her occupation after parting thus from her husband? Late into the night she sat writing an account of that day's business to her lover, with whom,' as she said, 'she had left her heart.' She told him of her meeting with Crawford, and of her coming to the King; she related with but slight verbal variations Darnley's passionate appeal to her, as Darnley himself had told it to his friend.

'I pretend,' she wrote, that I believe what he says; you never saw him better or heard him speak more humbly. If I did not know his heart was wax, and mine a diamond whereinto no shot can enter but that which comes from your hand, I could almost have had pity on him; but fear not, the plan shall hold to the death.'

If Mary Stuart was troubled with a husband, Bothwell was inconvenienced equally with a wife.

'Remember in return,' she continued, 'that you suffer not yourself to be won by that false mistress of yours, who will travel no less with you for the same; I believe they learnt their lesson together. He has ever a tear in his eye. He desires I should feed him with my own

1 Crawford's deposition.-Scotch MSS. Rolls House.