‘You are very young to say so,’ answered the Queen, ‘two years younger than I am; and I remember how I used to think that sorrow was the especial heritage of the old. I have learnt otherwise now; but you, Mary Hamilton, you whom I have always watched and sheltered as a bird shelters its nestling under its wing, what can _you_ know of suffering?’ The maid-of-honour looked wistfully at her mistress while she replied-- ‘I never can know real sorrow, madam,’ she said, ‘nor real suffering; because I have a refuge more secure than even a queen’s favours, and to that refuge I betake me whenever grief becomes too heavy to endure. Ah! madam, they may take everything from us here, but they cannot rob us of that; this world is sometimes very dark and sad, but the light is always shining just the same, far away at home.’ The Queen looked at her with concern and surprise. What could it be, this engrossing sorrow which cast its shadow over a young life that ought to have shone so hopeful and so bright? The girl must be very unhappy, she argued, to be so devout. Alas! that it should be so; that religion, instead of the pride of the strong, should so often prove but the refuge for the weak. And yet it is but one more instance of that mercy which knows no limit. The happy and the pious, too, enjoy indeed a favoured lot, but human nature is so warped, that in the majority continuous prosperity produces hardness of heart, and for these it ‘is good to be in trouble.’ When they have lost all (it matters not what constitutes it, fame, wealth, or affection) they run for consolation, like a child in distress to a parent, where it never is denied; and which of us is there who does not know how unspeakably precious is the balm of kindness to a bruised and empty heart? A few there are on whom adversity has a contrary effect--rebellious spirits, not without force of character and capacities for happiness, who become froward and desperate under the rod. Woe be to them! What shall bring such as these back to the fold? Human forbearance would say ‘let them go in their wilfulness to destruction!’ but it is well for us that it is not with human forbearance we have to do. The Queen of Scots herself was of a gay and hopeful disposition, one which perhaps it required many reverses to steady and sober down. Plenty of them she sustained ere all was done! In the meantime her kind heart was moved to think that her maid-of-honour should have some secret grief she herself could not alleviate.