The girl was puzzled; she could not understand him: yesterday, so kind and loyal and frank; to-day, so distant and calm and cold. Had he been the most experienced carpet-knight that ever made war upon the sex, instead of an honest, true-hearted soldier, he could not have adopted a better method of aggression. She had never felt so much engrossed with him in her life. It is hardly fair to fight a woman with her own weapons; but we imagine it discomfits them exceedingly, the more so that they are well aware a man’s coldness, unlike their own, is the result of real displeasure, and the forerunner of a rupture. Eventually all the ladies had chosen but Mary Carmichael; all the horsemen were selected but Walter Maxwell. She detached herself from the rest, and walked to where he was standing apart, still fastening his bridle and caressing his good horse. She tried to speak in an easy, off-hand manner; but a duller ear than his might have detected the forced tone of her voice. ‘They are mounting,’ said she; ‘you will be left out. Will you not be my knight?’ ‘For to-day,’ he answered, bowing low, and with a strained courtesy more galling than actual rudeness. Then he too sprang into the saddle and galloped off to join his comrades. The girl bit her lip till the blood came; tears of shame and vexation rose to her eyes; and yet she had never liked him so well as at this moment. The Queen with her ladies now returned to the gallery, from whence she could have a good view of the sports, dispensing once more amongst the crowd that good-humoured notice which is so fascinating from a sovereign. Many a reflective Scotch face smoothed its rugged brows as she passed; many a stern Protestant who followed weekly the vigorous discourses of John Knox with approval in proportion to the strength of their doctrine, and attention never diverted for a moment from the profound casuistry of their arguments, looked after her with a wistful, pitying admiration, as though loth to believe such a creature of light could be a chosen tool of the arch-enemy, and a vessel of wrath doomed to everlasting perdition. The younger members of the crowd blessed her audibly, while here and there some godless jackman, ruffling it in all the audacious freedom of inebriety, swore loudly that it was his profession and his pastime to die for the Queen. The Earl of Moray and his bride occupied the next seats to the royal household. Matrimony had not altered the composure of the deep-scheming earl. His own attire and that of his lady were of the gravest and most sombre, rebuking by their austere simplicity the bravery of the Queen’s immediate attendants.