On the day our story commences, Throgmorton, the English ambassador, had arrived at Sterling with despatches, which had been forwarded from London after the first news of young Darnley's death reached the court of St. James. Mary, eager to conciliate the imperious Elizabeth, had ordered an entertainment to be made in honor of her ambassador, and yielding to his first request, or rather demand for an audience, had been more than an hour closetted with him, in the little oratory which communicated alike with her audience-room and sleeping chamber. The hour for robing had long passed, and Ellen Craigh was alone in the royal bed-chamber, waiting the appearance of her mistress. She might have been taken for a sorrowing angel, as she sat in the embrasure of a window, with the mellow-tinted light streaming through the stained glass over her tresses of waving gold, and flooding her small and exquisite figure with a brilliancy almost too gorgeous to harmonize with the delicate cheek and sorrowful blue eyes, which, at the moment, wore an expression of suffering which nothing on earth can represent, so patient and holy was it. She continued in one position, listlessly swaying the cord of twisted gold, which looped back the curtain falling in magnificent volumes over the upper part of the window, or pulling the threads from a massive tassel and scattering them one by one at her feet, till the carpet around looked as if embroidered over and over with the glittering fragments. The indistinct voices which came from the oratory, where the queen and the ambassador were seated, fell unheeded upon her senses, till a tone was mingled with theirs which started her to sudden life. She leaped up with an energy that sent the mutilated tassel with a crash against the window, and flinging back the tapestry which concealed the door of the oratory, bent her eye to a crevice in the ill-fitted pannel. The beating of her heart was almost audible, and the thin slender hand which held back the tapestry quivered like a newly prisoned bird, as she gazed with intense eagerness into the apartment. The queen sat directly opposite the door. At her right hand was placed a dark handsome man, of about thirty, with a haughty and almost fierce array of countenance, dressed in a style of careless magnificence, which bespoke a love of display rather than true elegance in his choice of attire. A subdued smile lurked about his lips, and he seemed intently occupied in counting the links of a massive gold chain, which fell over his doublet of three-piled velvet, studded and gorgeously wrought with jewels and embroidery. Now and then he would drop his hand carelessly over the queen's chair-arm, and fix his black eyes with a bold and admiring gaze on her features, with a freedom which bespoke more of audacious love, than of respect for the royal beauty. She not only submitted to his free glance, but more than once returned it with one of