‘Your Majesty anticipates the congratulations I am but waiting an opportunity to offer. May I give my own mistress joy on your acceding so cordially to her views for your welfare?’ ‘You may do what you have authority for, and no more,’ replied the Queen severely. ‘My cousin can scarce spare me that master of the horse of hers, whom she so much regardeth herself, nor am I so scantily supplied with suitors that I need trespass on her generosity for so precious a bridegroom. Come, Mr Randolph,’ she added gaily, ‘this is Twelfth-night, and we read riddles and play at forfeits. Can you not read me mine?’ ‘Your Grace must condescend to instruct me,’ replied he, running over his information and calculating probabilities with inconceivable rapidity in his own mind; also studiously abstaining from the guess he thought most likely to hit the mark. ‘Where the prize is of such value, all are so unworthy that it reduces the competitors to a level. I can aim no nearer the white than my first shaft, your Grace. A suitor for such a hand as yours should have some weighty influence to back him, in addition to unbounded merits of his own.’ ‘You seem to have considered the subject deeply,’ said the Queen, laughing. ‘Come, Mr Randolph, for very pastime let us hear the qualifications you deem indispensable to an admirer of Mary Stuart.’ He paused for an instant, enumerating in his own mind the different qualities of the nobleman whom he was instructed, at least ostensibly, to put forward, and then proceeded with an air of the utmost deference and humility-- ‘He should be a gentleman of admirable presence; of skill in courtly exercises; of varied accomplishments; familiar with the customs of palaces; brave, noble, and learned; he should be of no foreign extraction, neither Frenchman, Spaniard, nor Italian; suitable in point of years, of language, and of country.’ She nodded archly every time he paused in his catalogue; then added with an inquiring look-- ‘And of royal lineage as well? Surely like pairs with like, and a Stuart should only mate with a Stuart.’ It was a home thrust. It corroborated much that he had already suspected, and explained a good deal that had sufficiently puzzled even Randolph, but he never winced or started; to judge by his face it was the communication, of all others, for which he was best prepared, and whilst he ran over, as quick as thought, the different combinations to which such a projected alliance might give rise, and already, in his mind’s eye, saw the young Lord Darnley, the suitor to whom Mary alluded, helpless in his toils, he bowed humbly to the Queen, and begged her to accept his heartfelt congratulations that she had made her choice at last. Mary laughed more than ever.