The colour was very deep in Mary’s cheek, and her eyes were fastened to the ground while he drew near, yet she stole a good look at him somehow, too, or she would not have been a woman. What she saw might have satisfied even her fastidious taste. Darnley was very tall and slim, but his limbs were so well-proportioned, his hands and feet so small and beautifully shaped, that his excessive height only gave him an air of peculiar grace and distinction above ordinary men. Even in the riding-dress of the period, though we may be sure that the handsome young noble wore one of the richest material, and of the most tasteful fashion such a costume allowed, he betrayed those habits of refinement almost bordering on coxcombry, which, when they accompany a fine manly person, have such an attraction for the other sex. All the details of his toilet had been carefully attended to before he started, and disordered as he now was, at least on his exterior, nature had written _gentleman_ in characters that could not be mistaken. Alas! that her pen can sometimes only trace skin deep. His face, too, was in accordance with the high-bred beauty of his form. The line of features was soft and delicate as a woman’s, the dark eyes shone out soft and tender from beneath a pair of pencilled eyebrows, the dark hair clustered in silken curls round a fair and open brow, pure and unruffled in the calm spring-time of youth, and though the mouth was that of a voluptuary rather than a hero, the small teeth were so white and regular, the lips so full and red, that, had it not been for the down beginning to shade its contour, it might have belonged to a girl. The whole countenance would indeed have been too effeminate, but for a bold sparkle in the eye, which corresponded well with the manly proportions of the frame. The subject was not half so much abashed as the sovereign. Darnley advanced confidently up the hall, then kneeling before the Queen and kissing the hand she tendered him, he looked boldly in her face and asked leave to deliver certain packets with which he was charged from his mother and kinsfolk. ‘But your mails have not yet arrived, my lord,’ said Mary. ‘You have outridden your retainers; you are the only one of your party who hath yet reached us here in our hiding-place beyond the Firth.’ She stopped in some embarrassment, unwilling that Darnley should learn how much his coming had been looked for and his arrival watched. ‘I have them with me here, your Grace,’ answered he, producing at the same time a packet from his bosom. ‘I would trust my Queen’s letters to no hands but my own, although to remind me of her I do not need to carry them next my heart.’