Two menials in the royal livery waited upon that noble company, but without the servile reverence which was exacted at the public festivals of royalty. The fair Argyle, who, in any other presence than that of her unrivalled mistress, would have been second to none in loveliness, jested and smiled with Mary more in the manner of a beloved companion than that of an attendant to a queen. But on the brow of David there was a deep and heavy gloom; and when he answered to the persiflage and polished railleries of the queen or that young countess, although his words were gay, and at times almost tender, the tones of his voice were grave almost to sadness. “What has befallen our worthy secretary?” said Mary, after many fruitless efforts to inspire him with livelier feelings. “Thou art no more the gay and gallant Signor David of other days than thou resemblest the stern and steel-clad--” Even as she spoke, it seemed as though her words had conjured up an apparition: for a figure, sheathed in steel from crest to spur, strode, with a step that faltered even amid its pride, from out the shadows of her private chamber into the full glare of the lamps. The vizor was raised, and the pale brow and haggard eye, the uncombed beard, and the corpse-like hue of the whole visage, better beseemed the character of some foul spirit released from its peculiar place, than of a noble baron in the presence of his queen. A loud shriek from the terrified Argyle first called the attention of Mary to the strange intruder. But David sat with his eye glaring, in a horrible mixture of personal apprehension and superstitious dread, upon the person of his deadliest foeman. “Arise, David, thou minion! arise, and quit the presence to which thou art a foul and plague-like blot!” cried the deep voice of Ruthven, ere a word had yet found its way to the lips of the indignant queen. “Sir Patrick Ruthven--if our eyes deceive us not,” she said at length, erecting her noble figure to its utmost, and bending upon him a glance which, hardened as he was in crime and cruelty, he could no more have met with his than the vile raven have gazed upon the noonday sun--“Sir Patrick Ruthven, we would learn what means this insolent intrusion?” “It means, fair madam,” replied Darnley--who now followed his savage instrument, accompanied by his no less fierce accomplices, the base-born Douglas, the brutal Ker of Fawdonside, in bearing and in manners fitted rather for the guardhouse than the court, and the most thorough ruffian of the party, Patrick de Balantyne--“it means that your vile minion’s race is run!” “Ha! comes the blow from thee?--I might indeed have deemed it so,” she replied, calmly but scornfully. “What is your grace’s pleasure?” and she smiled in beautiful contempt. “My pleasure is that he--yon base Italian, yon destroyer of my honor, and of yours--of your honor, madam, if you know such a word--shall perish!”