consummation. You are
dealing with it entirely from the standpoint of the heart and not of
the head, an error common with women, and one that has ever precluded
their effective dealing with matters of State. You will pardon me,
Lady Isabel, when I say that your sister takes a much more practical
view of the situation than you do. She is perfectly right in holding
that, having me prisoner here, it is impossible to allow me to go
scatheless. There is no greater folly than the folly of half doing a
thing."

"Does your majesty argue in favour of your own murder?" asked Isabel
amazed, gazing at the young man through her tears.

"Not so, but still that is a consideration which I must endeavour to
eliminate from my mind, if my advice is to be impartial, and of
service to you. May I beg of you to be seated? We have the night
before us, and may consider the various interesting points at our
leisure, and thus no irremediable mistake need be made."

Isabel, wellnigh exhausted with the intensity of her feelings, sank
upon the bench, but Catherine still stood motionless, dagger in hand,
her back against the door. The king, seeing she did not intend to
obey, went on suavely. There was a light of intense admiration in his
eye as he regarded the standing woman.

"Ladies," he said, "can you tell me when last a King of Scotland--a
James also--and a Catherine Douglas bore relation to each other in
somewhat similar circumstances?"

The king paused, but the girl, lowering at him, made no reply, and
after a few moments the young man went on.

"It was a year more than a century ago, when the life of James the
First was not only threatened, but extinguished, not by one brave
woman, but by a mob of cowardly assassins. Then Catherine Douglas
nearly saved the life of her king. She thrust her fair young arm into
the iron loops of a door, and had it shattered by those craven
miscreants."

Isabel wept quietly, her face in her two open hands. But Catherine
answered in anger,--

"Why did the Catherine Douglas of that day risk her life to save the
king? Because James the First was a just monarch. Why does the
Catherine Douglas of to-day wish to thrust her dagger into the false
heart of James the Fifth? Because he has turned on the hand that
nurtured him----"

"The hand that imprisoned him, Lady Catherine. Pardon my correction."

"He turned on the man who governed Scotland wisely and well."

"Again pardon me; he had no right to govern. I