He crooned this doggerel over twice or thrice, pointing at the same time to the wet sand below them, and the black shining rocks left bare by the ebb; but she never answered him, for ere he was silent the heavy boom of a culverin broke on the morning’s stillness, and a wreath of white smoke, rising above the walls of the castle, floated calmly and peacefully out to sea. The fool cowered down and hid his face in his hands. She did not start--she did not shriek, nor faint, nor quiver; but she threw her hood back and looked wildly upwards, gasping for air; then, as the rising sun shone on her bare head, Mary Hamilton’s raven hair was all streaked and patched with gray. CHAPTER XXV. ‘“How should I your true love know From another one?” “By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal-shoon.”’ While the grass was growing tall and rank on Chastelâr’s grave, the beauty that had bewildered and destroyed him was unconsciously sowing dissensions and intrigues in half the courts of Europe. Not only on the southern side of the Tweed did every turbulent noble and ambitious statesman look to Mary Stuart’s marriage as, in one way or other, a stepping-stone to his own aggrandisement, but each of the numerous parties in the state was prepared to put forward and support its candidate for her hand, totally irrespective of the lovely Queen’s personal feelings and predilections. Austria, Savoy, Spain, had also their claimants for the desired alliance; and it would be difficult to calculate the multiplicity of schemes and combinations originating in the desire of possessing the heiress to two kingdoms, and the most fascinating woman of the age. Perhaps the proposed union with the Crown-Prince of Spain was, of all matrimonial overtures, the most unpopular in Great Britain; and the Protestant party, now completely in the ascendant both in England and Scotland, would have resorted to the strongest measures rather than submit to such an arrangement. All the engines of an unscrupulous diplomacy were ready to be put in motion for the purpose of thwarting Don Carlos, and over-reaching his emissaries. Nor were Elizabeth and her agents likely to be restrained by any over-refinement of delicacy in a matter which concerned the stability of the English Queen’s power, and the very existence of her government. In the meantime, Mary and her maidens floated, so to speak, on the surface of all this turbulence and vexation, as the sea-bird floats with unruffled plumage on the restless waves. Their life was indeed one of constant variety and adventure, for their royal Mistress was too thorough a Stuart not to identify herself with all the difficulties and troubles of her kingdom, whilst the bonds of affection which riveted her attendants to her service were but drawn closer every day, by the dangers and hardships they shared in their huntings and progresses and judicial proceedings, through the length and breadth of Scotland.