Examine your conscience, Sire, and see the blot of ingratitude with which you have stained it. You say you are sorry for what you have done, and this gives me some comfort; yet I cannot but think that you are driven to it rather by necessity than led by any sentiment of true and sincere affection. Had I offended you as deeply as can be imagined, you could not have discovered how to avenge yourself on me with greater disgrace and cruelty. I thank God that neither you nor anyone in the world can charge me with ever having done or said aught justly to displease you, were it not for your own personal good. Your life is dear to me, and God and my duty oblige me to be as careful of it as of my own. But since you have placed us both on the brink of the precipice, you must now deliberate how we shall escape the peril.’" Such we can well believe to have been the feeling words of the outraged wife and queen. She had been humiliated by her husband in the eyes of the nation and of the world; and the ingratitude of him to whom she had been so devoted had inflicted on her heart a wound that she feared time could never heal. The bonds of love, which had been severed in spite of her and could not be reunited by an act of her will, no longer bound her to him, but "God and her duty" did, and his life would still be dear to her. A plan of escape was arranged, and Darnley, acting with more coolness and shrewdness than was his wont, had the guards removed from the royal apartments, and, two nights later, he and Mary, accompanied by a few faithful attendants, having stealthily escaped from the palace by a back way, mounted their horses and hurried off to Dunbar. Once more free to appeal to the loyalty of her people, the Queen had nothing to fear. The traitor lords, outwitted and alarmed, dispersed and fled, some--especially those most prominent in the execution of the murder--betaking themselves across the border, and others withdrawing to retreats in the country. Mary was now in a position in which, had she been of a vindictive nature, she could have taken complete revenge on her enemies. But her habitual clemency prevailed, and her ear was soon again open to the prayers for pardon that reached her from the conspirators. Her generous conduct could not fail to win hearts even among her former foes, and when, three months afterwards, James VI. was born in Edinburgh Castle, hearty demonstrations of joy marked the event throughout the whole realm. "I never," wrote the French Ambassador, Le Croc, to Cardinal Beaton, "saw Her Majesty so much beloved, honoured and esteemed, nor so great a harmony among all her subjects as at present is by her wise conduct; for I cannot perceive the smallest difference or division."