But it had all been vain. The fiat had gone forth, and reason had deserted, as it would seem, the destined victim. No arguments, however lucid--no fears, however natural, could divert her from this fatal project. With the choice of good and evil fairly set before her--honor, and rank, and liberty, in France, a prison and an axe in England--deliberately and resolutely she rushed upon her fate! And when she might have found a willing asylum in the arms of kindred monarchs, she yielded herself to the tender mercies of a rival queen, a rival beauty; a fierce, unforgiving, unfeminine foe; a being who, as she aped the name, so also displayed the attributes and nature of the lion! How could Mary--a professed foe, a claimant of her crown, a woman fairer, and of brighter parts even than her own--a mother, while she was but a barren stake--how could Mary, with so many causes to awaken her deathless hostility, hope for generosity or for mercy from a queen who could even sacrifice without a pang her inclinations to her interest; whose favors but marshalled those on whom they fell to the scaffold and the block; whose dearest favorites, whose most faithful servants had fallen, one by one, beneath the headsman’s axe; who had proved herself, in short, a worthy heiress to the soulless tyrant from whom she had sprung, by the violence of her uncurbed passions, and by the hereditary pleasure with which, through all her long and glorious reign (glorious, as it is termed, for with the multitude the ends will ever justify the means, and foreign conquest hallow domestic tyranny), she rioted in innocent and noble blood! The Rubicon had been passed--and scarcely passed, before Mary had discovered the entire justice, no less than the deep love, manifested by the parting words of Herries. As her last sovereignty, she had stepped aboard the barge that was to waft her from her discontented and ungrateful subjects to a free and happy home, as she too fondly hoped, in merry England. Girt with the bills and bows which had battened so deeply and so often in the gore of Scottishmen, gallantly dressed, and himself of gallant bearing, Lowther, the sheriff of the marches, received the royal fugitive. With every mark of deference that manly strength is bound to show to female weakness, with all the chivalrous respect a good knight is compelled by his order to display to innocence and beauty--nay, more, with all the profound humility of a subject before his queen--did he conduct the hapless lady aboard his bark. Yet, while the words of welcome were upon his tongue, while he dwelt with loyal eagerness on the sincerity and love of England’s Elizabeth toward her sister-queen--by his refusal to admit above a limited and trifling portion of her train to share the asylum of their mistress, he had already drawn the distinction between the royal captive and the royal guest.