Chastelâr still remained perfectly immovable; never once had he taken his eyes off the Queen’s face; never once had the strange longing, loving gaze, with its dash of wild triumph and its depth of intense affection, faded or varied for an instant. While they bound him fast, drawing a girdle tight round his arms above the elbow, he neither seemed to feel the pressure, nor to be conscious of the indignity; while they pressed round him and hustled him from the room, his looks never strayed for an instant from the Queen. All this Mary Hamilton saw as if in a trance. Though every stroke of her pulse beat with a loud stupefying clang upon her brain, she knew that this was reality, that this was truth, that there was no hope of awaking to find it all a dream; but when Chastelâr reached the door, and beholding the Queen no longer seemed roused to consciousness at last, she met his eye for the first time, and the whole hopeless misery of her situation rushed upon her at once. He smiled on her very sadly and kindly; there was a pitying, remorseful expression in his face--a wistful, mournful tenderness in his glance: she could bear it no longer, and she fainted dead away upon the floor. CHAPTER XXII. ‘“And grant me his life!” Lady Margaret cried; “Oh! grant but his life to me! And I’ll give ye my gold and my lands so wide, An’ ye let my love go free. ‘“And spare me his life!” Lady Margaret prest, “As ye hope for a pardon above; And I’ll give ye the heart from out of my breast For the life of my own true love!”’