have been mere subterfuge, and it served no purpose. Moray, who cared little for Chastelar's life or his sister's reputation-willing rather to destroy both-ordered the poet to prison, and would not listen to any extenuating circumstances suggested on his behalf by Mary herself! The whole party, offender and offended, passed onward to St. Andrews, where within three days the too-presuming poet was put upon his trial, by way of preparation for his execution. During this investigation, "the Earl of Moray made repeated indirect attempts to lead him to make statements prejudicial to the queen, urging him, with a show of candour and pretended regard for justice, to inform the Court of any thing and every thing which he thought might be available in his defence, without regard to the rank and condition of those whom such statements might implicate. This language was too plain to be misunderstood. Every one present perceived that it contained a pointed allusion to the queen. Chastelar, amongst the rest, felt that it did so;" and he first laid all the scandal to his own folly, and then ascribed it to the intensity of his love "for the noblest and loveliest of created beings."

This plea was not calculated to benefit the prisoner, who was forthwith condemned to be beheaded, and small time left him for shrift. Some of that time he passed, however, in taking leave of the queen in mournfully-tender verse. For this poetry Mary had no appetite; she had lost her old feeling of pity, and was as little inclined that Chastelar's life should be saved as Moray was. She withdrew to Holyrood before the execution, rejected an application for mercy," and commanded the following couplet, inscribed by an unknown hand on the wall of her chamber, to be effaced:

'Sur front de roy

Que pardon soit !'"

But there is a tradition that Mary connived at an attempt to effect Chastelar's escape.

Some accounts make this Dauphiny poet die with levity. It is evident that Chastelar encountered death in the spirit of a man who was without fear, but not without feeling. He walked to the scaffold repeating the "Hymn to Death," by his friend Ronsard, in which are sung the pain and vanity of human desire, and the superior calm and content of death. This was something Pagan, and Brantôme records that Chastelar "employed no other spiritual book, nor minister, nor confessor;" that is to say, neither Presbyterian nor Roman Catholic. But Knox, who detested him with all heartiness, says: "At the place of execution, when he saw that there was no remedy but death, he made a godly confession ;" and Randolph asserts that he died with repentance: that he died with something too of the old troubadour spirit, cannot be denied. When he had concluded reciting the Hymn to Death, he turned, according to Brantôme, in the direction of the place where he supposed the queen to be, and exclaimed aloud, Farewell,

6

most beautiful and most cruel princess in the world! And then, fearlessly offering his neck to the executioner, he allowed himself to be disposed of without difficulty.

Thus ended one of the most curious episodes in the history of those times. We have dealt with it at some length, because though it be but an episode, it led to matters of greater historical importance. It excited a general desire that the queen should place her honour under the safeguard of a second husband; and it led to that fatal marriage with Darnley-a weak, vain, diseased lad—which again was followed by the murder of a royal favourite, the cruel assassination of Mary's husband, and her re-marriage with the murderer, hot and bloody with his evil work. Other consequences ensued, which it is beyond our limits to narrate; but war, the sword, or the executioner is to be found in each succeeding episode of that miserable queen's most miserable life. As the question of Mary's immediate marriage would not have been so pertinaciously urged but for the scandal raised by Chastelar, we may at once see what misery arose out of the indiscretion of the queen, who caused, if she did not encourage, the presumption of the poet. But we need not speculate on what might have been, but for this early fault in Mary's chequered career. The story, as it can be told from such authorities as exist, is not narrated perhaps in all the fulness that the truth would bear. All that we are likely to obtain from state-papers that may yet be discovered may not add much to help conclusions at which we have already arrived, contingently and conjecturally. We may guess that which may be hereafter proved; meanwhile, we are thankful for what we can get, and are especially thankful to all chroniclers who have power to condense their materials, who do not employ their imaginations in the elaboration of facts, who eschew affectation, who refrain from misappropriation of the labours of others, who have patience to weigh authorities, and sense and fairness in determining between conflicting evidence.

Land at Last.

BY EDMUND YATES,
AUTHOR OF "BROKEN TO HARNESS."

Book the Second.

CHAPTER XI.

CONJECTURES.

MISS MAURICE was not in the house when Geoffrey Ludlow and his wife made that visit to Lord Caterham which had so plainly manifested Margaret's imprudence and inexperience. The housekeeper and one of the housemaids had come to the assistance of the gentlemen, both equally alarmed, and one at least calculated to be, of all men living, the most helpless under the circumstances. Geoffrey was “awfully frightened," as he told her afterwards, when Margaret fainted.

"I shall never forget the whiteness of your face, my darling, and the dreadful sealed look of your eyelids. I thought in a moment that was how you would look if you were dead; and what should I do if I ever had to see that sight!"

This loving speech Geoffrey made to his wife as they drove homewards, she pale, silent, and coldly abstracted; he full of tender anxiety for her comfort and apprehension for her health,-sentiments which rendered him, to say the truth, rather a trying companion in a carriage; for he was constantly pulling the glasses up and down, fixing them a button-hole higher or lower, rearranging the blinds, and giving the coachman contradictory orders. These proceedings were productive of an apparent annoyance to Margaret, who lay back against the cushions with eyes open and moody, and her underlip caught beneath her teeth. She maintained unbroken silence until they reached home, and then briefly telling Geoffrey that she was going to her room to lie down, she left him.

"She's not strong," said Geoffrey, as he proceeded to disembarrass himself of his out-door attire, and to don his "working-clothes"—" she's not strong; and it's very odd she's not more cheerful. I thought the child would have made it all right; but perhaps it will when she's stronger." And Geoff sighed as he went to his work, and sighed again once or twice as he pursued it.

Meanwhile Lord Caterham was thinking over the startling incident which had just occurred. He was an observant man naturally, and the enforced inaction of his life had increased this tendency; while his long and deep experience of physical suffering and weakness had rendered him acutely alive to any manifestations of a similar kind in other people.

Mrs. Ludlow's fainting-fit puzzled him. She had been looking so remarkably well when she came in; there had been nothing feverish, nothing suggestive of fictitious strength or over-exertion in her appearance; no feebleness in her manner or languor in the tone of her voice. The suddenness and completeness of the swoon were strange,-were so much beyond the ordinary faintness which a drive uudertaken a little too soon might be supposed to produce,-and the expression of Margaret's face, when she had recovered her consciousness, was so remarkable, that Lord Caterham felt instinctively the true origin of her illness had not been that assigned to it.

"She looked half-a-dozen years older," he thought: "and the few words she said were spoken as if she were in a dream. I must be more mistaken than I have ever been, or there is something very wrong about that woman. And what a good fellow he is!-what a simple-hearted blundering kind fellow! How wonderful his blindness is! I saw in a moment how he loved her,-how utterly uninterested she is in him and his affairs. I hope there may be nothing worse than lack of interest; but I am afraid, very much afraid for Ludlow."

And then Lord Caterham's thoughts wandered away from the artist and his beautiful wife to that other subject which occupied them so constantly, and with which every other subject of cogitation or of contemplation contrived to mingle itself in an unaccountable manner, on which he did not care to reason now, and against which he did not attempt to strive. What did it matter now? He might be ever so much engrossed, and no effort at self-control or self-conquest could be called for; the feelings he cherished unchecked could not harm any one -could not harm himself now. There was great relief, great peace in that thought, no strife for him to enter on, no struggle in which his suffering body and weary mind must engage. The end would be soon with him now; and while he waited for it, he might love this bright young girl with all the power of his heart.

So Lord Caterham lay quite still upon the couch on which they had placed Margaret when she fainted, and thought over all he had intended to say to Geoffrey, and must now seek another opportunity of saying, and turned over in his mind sundry difficulties which he began to foresee in the way of his cherished plan, and which would probably arise in the direction of Mrs. Ludlow. Annie and Margaret had not hitherto seen much of each other, as has already appeared; and there was something ominous in the occurrence of that morning which troubled Lord Caterham's mind and disturbed his preconcerted arrangements. If trouble-trouble of some unknown kind, but, as he intuitively felt, of a serious nature-were hanging over Geoffrey Ludlow's head, what was to become of his guardianship of Annie in the future,that future which Lord Caterham felt was drawing so near; that future which would find her without a friend, and would leave her exposed to countless flatterers! He was pondering upon these things when Annie

entered the room, bright and blooming, after her drive in the balmy summer air, and carrying a gorgeous bouquet of crimson roses.

She was followed by Stevens, carrying two tall Venetian glasses, which he placed on a table, and then withdrew.

"Look, Arthur," said Annie; "we've been to Fulham, and I got these fresh cut, all for your own self, at the nursery-gardens. None of those horrid formal tied-up bouquets for you, or for me either, with the buds stuck on with wires, and nasty fluffy bits of cotton sticking to the leaves. I went round with the man, and made him cut each rose as I pointed it out; and they're such beauties, Arthur! Here's one for you to wear and smell and spoil; but the others I'm going to keep fresh for ever so long."

She went over to the couch and gave him the rose, a rich crimson full-formed flower, gorgeous in colour and exquisite in perfume. He took it with a smile, and held it in his hand.

"Why don't you put it in your button-hole, Lord Caterham?" said Annie, with a pretty air of pettishness which became her well.

"Why?" said Lord Caterham. "Do you think I am exactly the style of man to wear poses and breast-knots, little Annie?" His tone was sad through its playfulness.

"Nonsense, Arthur," she began; "you-" Then she looked at him, and stopped suddenly, and her face changed. "Have you been worse to-day? You look very pale. Have you been in pain? Did you want me?"

"No, no, my child," said Lord Caterham; "I am just as usual. Go on with your flowers, Annie,-settle them up, lest they fade. They are beautiful indeed, and we'll keep them as long as we can."

She was not reassured, and she still stood and gazed earnestly at him.

"I am all right, Annie,-I am indeed. My head is even easier than usual. But some one has been ill, if I haven't. Your friends the Ludlows were here to-day. Did no one tell you as you came in?"

"No, I did not see any one; I left my bonnet in the ante-room and came straight in here. I only called to Stevens to bring the flowerglasses. Was Mrs. Ludlow ill, Arthur? Did she come to see me?"

"I don't think so-she only came, I think, because I wanted to see Ludlow, and he took advantage of the circumstance to have a drive with her. Have you seen her since the child was born?"

"No, I called, but only to inquire. But was she ill? What happened?"

“Well, she was ill-she fainted. Ludlow and I were just beginning to talk, and, at her own request, leaving her to amuse herself with the photographs and things lying about-and she had just asked me some trifling question, something about Lionel's portrait-whose it was, I think-when she suddenly fainted. I don't think there could be a more complete swoon; she really looked as though she were dead.”