Ignorant where to turn for repose and safety, Mary began to lose much of the natural vivacity and buoyancy of her temper; and to feel, that in those turbulent times, she was endowed with too little of that dissimulation, which enabled her sister Elizabeth to steer so successfully among the rocks and shoals of government. In a letter written about this period to one of her female relations in France, she says, touchingly, "It will grieve you to hear how entirely, in a very short time, I have changed my character, from that of the most easily satisfied and care-chasing of mortals, to one embroiled in constant turmoils and perplexities." "She was sad and pensive," says Sir James Melville, "for the late foul act committed in her presence so irreverently. So many great sighs she would give that it was pity to hear her, and over-few were careful to comfort her." But the perfidy of her nobles Mary could have borne;--it was the disaffection and wickedness of her husband that afflicted her most. Anxious to believe that he told her the truth, when he asserted that he was not implicated in the murder of Rizzio, she rejoiced to see him issue a proclamation, declaring that he was neither "a partaker in, nor privy to, David's slaughter." But the truth was too notorious to be kept long concealed. Randolph wrote to Cecil on the 4th of April 1566:--"The Queen hath seen all the covenants and bands that passed between the King and the Lords, and now findeth that his declaration before her and Council, of his innocency of the death of David, was false; and is grievously offended, that by their means he should seek to come to the crown matrimonial." Hence sprang the grief which, in secret, preyed so deeply upon Mary's health and spirits. Few things are more calculated to distress a generous mind, than to discover that the object of its affections is unworthy the love which has been lavished upon it. The young and graceful Darnley, laying at Mary's feet the real or pretended homage of his heart, was a very different person from the headstrong and designing King, colleaguing with her rebels, assassinating her faithful servant, and endeavouring to snatch the crown from her head. "That very power," says Robertson, "which, with liberal and unsuspicious fondness she had conferred upon him, he had employed to insult her authority, to limit her prerogative, and to endanger her person: such an outrage it was impossible any woman could bear or forgive." Yet Mary looked upon these injuries, coming as they did from the man whom she had chosen to be the future companion of her life, "more in sorrow than in anger;" and though she shed many a bitter tear over his unworthiness, she did not cease to love him.