‘I will do as you wish,’ was all she answered, once more dropping the hood over her face and hurrying away. They were within a stone’s throw of the Queen’s lodging, and it was already time for her to resume her duties. Her mind was in a sad tumult when she left him. She felt she was going to do wrong, deliberately wrong; yet how could she refuse him? She loved him so, and he was going away! With a wicked smile, suggestive of anything but mirth or happiness, engraven, as it were, on his countenance, Chastelâr strode up the narrow street to the stable in which his trusty chestnut was disposed. This animal was a gift from the Queen, and valued accordingly. We would fain describe him from his velvet muzzle to his flinty hoofs, for where shall we find so seductive a theme as the beauty of a horse? but will only observe that he was in every respect a fitting present from royalty. The Frenchman ordered his favourite to be saddled with considerable parade, and spoke loudly of the journey before him. Then, ostentatiously assuming his arms and valise, mounted and rode away in the direction of Dunfermline, followed, as his figure disappeared in the gloom, by the admiring glances of such ostlers and retainers as his noisy departure had gathered to observe him. For a mile or so he proceeded along the coast, and then, turning off the horse-track into the recess of an old quarry, dismounted and fastened his horse to the roots of a whin-bush, growing from the chinks in the cold blue stone. For all his feverish excitement, he disposed the animal in a nook sheltered from the chill east wind, and taking his own cloak from about him cast it over the flanks of his dumb friend. Then, with a farewell pat, he returned on foot the way he had come, rapidly and breathlessly, never stopping till he reached the hamlet of Burntisland, and saw the lights twinkling once more in the Queen’s lodging. He stole softly to the garden-gate, of which he had spoken to Mary Hamilton. It opened noiselessly to his push. By this time it was quite dark, and on entering the enclosure he found no necessity for concealment amongst the scanty shrubs it contained. Here he drew off his heavy horseman’s boots with extreme caution, and thus, with his rapier at his side, and his pistols in his belt, took up his position close against the door of the house, which opened outwards. Here he waited, watched, and listened. A drizzling rain was falling, and the wind was very keen, but, though stripped to his doublet and hose, Chastelâr was unconscious of the weather. Had he been immersed in snow, he could scarce have felt cold while that fever burned and raged so fiercely at his heart. CHAPTER XXI. ‘For constancy hath her place above, And life is thorny, and youth is vain, And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain.’