Though but few materials remain to enable us to reconstruct the story of Mary Beton's life, a fortunate chance gives us the means of judging of the truth of the high-flown compliments paid to her beauty by both Randolph and Buchanan. A portrait of her is still shown at Balfour House, in Fife. It represents, we are told, "a very fair beauty, with dark eyes and yellow hair", and is said to justify all that has been written in praise of her personal charms.[91] The first to fall a victim to these was the English envoy, Randolph. A letter of his to the Earl of Bedford, written in April, 1565, mentions, as an important fact, that Mistress Beton and he had lately played a game at biles against the Queen and Darnley, that they had been successful against their royal opponents, and that Darnley had paid the stakes.[92] In another letter, written to Leicester, he thinks it worthy of special record that for four days he had sat next her at the Queen's table, at St. Andrews. "I was willed to be at my ordinary table, and being placed the next person, saving worthy Beton, to the Queen herself." Writing to the same nobleman he makes a comparison between her and Mary Fleming, of whom, as we have seen, he had drawn so glowing a description, and declares that, "if Beton had lyked so short a time, so worthie a rowme, Flemyng to her by good right should have given place".[93] Knowing, as we do, from the testimony of other letters, how prone Randolph was to overrate his personal influence, and with what amusing self-conceit he claimed for himself the special favours of the ladies of the Scottish Court, there is every reason to suspect the veracity of the statement contained in the following extract from a letter to Sir Henry Sidney: "I doubt myself whether I be the self-same man that now will be content with the name of your countryman, that have the whole guiding, the giving, and bestowing, not only of the Queen, and her kingdom, but of the most worthy Beton, to be ordered and ruled at mine own will". Like her colleague, Mary Fleming, "the most worthy Beton" had her hour of mock royalty, as we learn from three sets of verses in which Buchanan extols her beauty, worth, and accomplishments, and which are inscribed: "Ad Mariam Betonam pridie Regalium Reginam sorte ductam". In the first of these, which bears some resemblance to that addressed to Mary Fleming on a similar occasion, he asserts, with poetical enthusiasm, the mimic sovereign's real claims to the high dignity which Fortune has tardily conferred upon her:-- Princely in mind and virtue, and so fair, You've long seemed fit a diadem to wear; And Fortune, blushing to have stood aloof, Now lavishes her gifts to your behoof; Deeming atonement for her tardiness Demands in justice she should do no less, She brings the Queen whom all the rest obey A willing subject to your sovereign sway.