Through her happy childhood in the peaceful islet of Inch-ma-home--through her graceful youth, spent with the daughters of France in the quiet retreats of Amboise and Fontainebleau--through her early wedded life and short supremacy, as through her widowhood, when the _Blanche Reine_ was the darling and pride of the French court, this shadow of evil never left her. It pervaded her turbulent reign in Scotland, her many reverses, her cruel injuries, her disheartening defeats, her dreary captivity. Perhaps it never faded from her brow till the glory of death shone over it, in the hands of the headsman at Fotheringay. Mary looked round her courtiers in dismay at Arran’s extraordinary conduct. The sad expression was more than usually apparent on her fair forehead: she whispered a few words to her brother, who seemed to be her refuge, as was natural, in her difficulties, and Lord James, darting another glance at Morton, quitted the apartment with his usual staid impassive air. Then the Queen, rising, broke up the circle by which she was surrounded, and pacing through the room, addressed herself by turns to the different nobles present, and was observed to be more than usually condescending to the Earl of Morton, as though some instinctive prescience bade her deprecate, as early as possible, the hostility of that fierce uncompromising nature. The Earl’s grim countenance relaxed into a smile that added to its natural ghastliness, as she passed; and Secretary Maitland whispered to Lord John Stuart that-- ‘The Douglas was in a courtly mood to-night, and reminded him of the lion in George Buchanan’s elegy that was led by the lady in a silken chain;’ to which the gay prior of Coldinghame, contemplating a shapely leg he loved well to display in a galliard, replied with a light laugh-- ‘I never mistrust the lion so much as when he shows his fangs,’ alluding to the prominent teeth and unshapely mouth of the redoubted Earl. ‘Nor I the Douglas so much as when he hides his claws,’ answered Secretary Maitland; and the two passed gaily on to take part in the amusements and revelry that once more enlivened the walls of old Holyrood. CHAPTER VI. ‘She waited not for guard nor groom, But stepp’d into the hall: Around her were the four Maries, Herself the rose of all.’ It is not always in the immediate presence of royalty that there is the most enlivening conversation, or the greatest amount of gaiety about a court. Although the Queen of Scotland was the essence of good-humour, and when in comparative privacy encouraged to the utmost freedom of intercourse and absence of formality amongst her attendants, yet on an occasion like the present, in a gathering of the great nobility of her kingdom, it may easily be imagined that an unusual amount of decorum and restraint was observed throughout the circle which actually surrounded their sovereign.