Mary Stuart’s cheek turned very red, and her breath came quick and short! the woman could not but appreciate the compliment, however much the Queen must study to conceal her feelings. This looked like an earnest wooer in good truth; no laggard could thus have distanced his followers and arrived in such an incredibly short space of time from the southern shore. Aye! there was more lost and won on that ride of young Lord Darnley’s than the collar of pearls and rubies which David Riccio delivered the same evening with such a good grace to saucy Mistress Seton. But the Queen’s innate dignity soon reasserted itself. Signing to her ladies to attend on her, she paced majestically from the room. ‘It would ill become us,’ said she, ‘to keep one waiting for an audience who hath shown such loyal diligence in obeying our summons; we will receive our guest in the great hall of the castle. Do you, Signior Riccio, apprise him that we are ready to accept his homage. Mary Carmichael and Mary Hamilton attend us for a few minutes to our tiring-room; we will all meet again here, and proceed at once to the hall.’ Mary seldom spoke in such a measured dignified tone. It may be that this stately manner covered some little trepidation and heart-beating; it may be that the Queen felt timid and bashful as the meekest village maiden. At least it was remarkable that the most beautiful woman in Europe should have thought it necessary to revise her toilet, and add to her attractions before receiving the homage of her vassal and kinsman. It was no ordinary phalanx of beauty that Darnley had to confront when the venerable seneschal of Wemyss Castle ushered him into the lofty hall, at the end of which, on a portion raised by one step above the level of the floor, was placed the royal lady to whom he had dared to aspire as his bride; her exquisite loveliness only enhanced by the presence of the four prettiest women in Scotland who stood behind her. But ‘faint heart never won fair lady,’ and Darnley’s was by no means one of those dispositions which are prone to fail from a retiring modesty and too low an estimate of their own advantages. Besides, he was playing a great stake, and playing it with all the reckless audacity of a gambler. Young as he was, he well knew that the prize now before him represented not only the Majesty of Scotland, but possibly, nay, in all human probability, the eventual succession to the English throne. It was this contingency which made Elizabeth so jealous of all matrimonial overtures to her beautiful cousin; it was this which caused Cecil and Throckmorton, and their agent Randolph, to lay their cunning heads together and devise means for amusing the Scottish Queen with a procession of suitors, none of whom were ever intended to be more than the puppets of the moment, each to prevent the attainment of his object by the other.