On her bridle-hand, Mary might have scanned the wide champaign of two counties, through which two rivers ran in parallel lines to the ocean, the intermediate space dotted with woods and rich in cultivation, the river Eden gleaming like silver in the foreground, the smoke of Dundee floating white against the dark heights of Forfarshire, as it followed the downward current of the Tay, and in the far distance, the dim outline of the noble Grampians, losing their misty tops amongst the clouds that streaked the placid sky. Yet Mary marked nothing of this. With a flushed cheek, with a drooping head, and, oh! with a cruel sorrow at her heart, she galloped on, and never checked her pace, nor addressed her attendants, till she reached the gate of the ecclesiastical city once more. Then she drew rein, and as they rode together up the South Street, she blamed herself that she had not sooner observed and taken pity on Mary Hamilton’s obvious exhaustion both of mind and body. The bay-horse was, ere this, reduced to a state of abject submission and docility; the bridle, on which he was wont to strain so eagerly, lay loose upon his neck, and he seemed to be looking about for his stable with a very wistful expression of fatigue and discomfiture; but his rider’s face was pale and rigid, while her eye was wide open, and her mouth firmly set; she seemed unconscious of all that was passing around her, and disclosed that vacant, yet pitiful expression of face which is only to be seen in those who walk in their sleep, or who are undergoing some racking torture of mind by which their outer faculties are benumbed. ‘You are weary, child,’ said the Queen, kindly. ‘I should have remembered you are not so indefatigable a rider as myself. Well, we are at home now, and I shall not require you again this evening.’ So speaking, the Queen leapt lightly from her palfrey, and flung the rein to the attending page, but as she did so she looked once more in the face of Mary Hamilton, who was dismounting, and something she saw there made her start back, and exclaim in an agitated whisper-- ‘What is it, child? You frighten me! What is it?’ The other found her voice at last, but it came husky and broken to her lips. ‘For mercy sake, madam!’ said she, ‘let me unrobe you, my kind mistress, do not deny me this one favour! Let me unrobe you, and alone.’ The Queen, though still startled, blushed vividly as something crossed her mind, that yet seemed partly to reassure her, and she beckoned her maid-of-honour to follow as she entered her private apartments, then dismissing her other attendants, threw herself into a chair, and with the colour not yet faded from her brow, bade Mary Hamilton unburthen herself of this dreadful grief that was weighing on her mind.