Mary, to be brief, sends to Bothwell a symbolic mourning ring, enclosing her hair. It is enamelled in black, with tears and bones. Such a ring is given by a girl to her lover, as a parting token, in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ (xxvi.), a ring _d’or, esmailée de larmes noires_.[371] She promises always to keep the ‘marriage’ (that is the contract of marriage, or can it be a ring typical of marriage?) in her bosom, till the actual wedding in public. Now she had a sentimental habit of wearing love tokens ‘in her bosom.’ She writes to Norfolk from Coventry (December, 1569), ‘I took the diamant from my Lord Boyd, which I shall keep unseene about my neck till I give it agayn to the owner of it and of me both.’[372] As to the Contract of Marriage (if Mary wore that in her bosom[373]), two alleged contracts were produced for the prosecution. One was a ‘contract or promise of marriage’ by Mary to Bothwell, in the Italic hand, and in French; the hand was said to be Mary’s own. It was undated, and a memorandum in the ‘Detection’ says, ‘Though some words therein seme to the contrary, yet is on credible groundes supposed to have been made and written by her befoir the death of her husband.’ The document explicitly mentions that ‘God has taken’ Darnley. The document, or jewel, treasured by Mary would, of course, be Bothwell’s solemn promise, or token of promise, the counterpart of hers to him, published in Buchanan.[374] Now there also existed a contract, said to be in Huntly’s hand, and signed by Mary and Bothwell, of date April 5 (at Seton), 1567. But this contract speaks of the process of divorce ‘intentit’ between Bothwell and his ‘pretensit spouse.’ Now that suit, on April 5, was not yet before the Court (though some documents had been put in), nor did Lady Bothwell move in the case till after Mary’s abduction. If Mary kept _this_ contract, and if it be correctly dated, then Letter VIII. is not of January-February, but of April, 1567. If Mary regarded herself as now privately married, this pose would explain the phrase ‘your brother-in-law _that was_,’ in Letter VIII. But this is stretching possibilities. Mr. Hosack has argued that the Letter just translated was really written to Darnley, between whom and Mary some private preliminary ceremony of marriage was said to have passed. In that case the words _par Paris_, ‘I send you by Paris, &c.,’ are a forged interpolation, as Paris was not in Mary’s service till January, 1567. The opening sentence about the danger which, as every one thinks, menaces her correspondent, might refer to Darnley. But the tone of remonstrance against indifference, suspicion, and violated promises, is the tone of almost all the Casket Letters, and does not apply to Darnley--before his public marriage. As to the ‘heart in a ring,’ Mary, as Laing notes, had written to Elizabeth ‘Je vous envoye mon cœur en bague.’ The phrase in the Letter, _seul soutien de ma vie_, also occurs in one of the Casket Sonnets.