m. "Listen!"

From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accompanied by a
noise as of something being trundled.

"It will be my servants in my room--putting it to rights."

"To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?" he asked. He
raised his voice and called his page.

"Why, what will you do?" she asked him, steadying her own alarm.

He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what was
doing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand
faithfully, he would have found Bothwell's followers, Hay and
Hepburn, and the Queen's man, Nicholas Hubert better known as French
Paris--emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under the
King's bed. But it happened that in the passage he came suddenly face
to face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked and hatted, and
Bothwell asked him whither he went.

The boy told him.

"It is nothing," Bothwell said. "They are moving Her Grace's bed in
accordance with her wishes."

And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectively
blocked his path, chose the line of lesser resistance. He went back to
bear the King that message as if for himself he had seen what my Lord
Bothwell had but told him.

Darnley was pacified by the assurance, and the lad withdrew.

"Did I not tell you how it was?" quoth Mary. "Is not my word enough?"

"Forgive the doubt," Darnley begged her. "Indeed, there was no doubt of
you, who have shown me so much charity in my affliction." He sighed, and
looked at her with melancholy eyes.

"I would the past had been other than it has been between you and me,"
he said. "I was too young for kingship, I think. In my green youth I
listened to false counsellors, and was quick to jealousy and the follies
it begets. Then, when you cast me out and I wandered friendless, a devil
took possession of me. Yet, if you will but consent to bury all the
past into oblivion, I will make amends, and you shall find me worthier
hereafter."

She rose, white to the lips, her bosom heaving under her long cloak.
She turned aside and stepped to the window. She stood there, peering out
into the gloom of the close, her knees trembling under her.

"Why do you not answer me?" he cried.

"What answer do you need?" she said, and her voice shook. "Are you not
answered already?" And then, breathlessly, she added: "It is time to go,
I think."

They heard a heavy step upon the stairs and the clank of a sw