d your beloved brother, the Earl of Murray, regent of the
kingdom."

"Indeed!" said Mary. "The Secret Council thinks it needs my confirmation
to an act of such slight importance? And my beloved brother, to bear
it without remorse, needs that it should be I who add a fresh title to
those of Earl of Mar and of Murray that I have already bestowed upon
him? But one cannot desire anything more respectful and touching than
all this, and I should be very wrong to complain. My lords," continued
the queen, rising and changing her tone, "return to those who have sent
you, and tell them that to such demands Mary Stuart has no answer to
give."

"Take care, madam," responded Ruthven; "for I have told you it is only
on these conditions that your pardon can be granted you."

"And if I refuse this generous pardon," asked Mary, "what will happen?"

"I cannot pronounce beforehand, madam; but your Grace has enough
knowledge of the laws, and above all of the history of Scotland and
England, to know that murder and adultery are crimes for which more than
one queen has been punished with death."

"And upon what proofs could such a charge be founded, my lord? Pardon
my persistence, which takes up your precious time; but I am sufficiently
interested in the matter to be permitted such a question."

"The proof, madam?" returned Ruthven. "There is but one, I know; but
that one is unexceptionable: it is the precipitate marriage of the widow
of the assassinated with the chief assassin, and the letters which have
been handed over to us by James Balfour, which prove that the guilty
persons had united their adulterous hearts before it was permitted them
to unite their bloody hands."

"My lord," cried the queen, "do you forget a certain repast given in
an Edinburgh tavern, by this same Bothwell, to those same noblemen who
treat him to-day as an adulterer and a murderer; do you forget that at
the end of that meal, and on the same table at which it had been given,
a paper was signed to invite that same woman, to whom to-day you make
the haste of her new wedding a crime, to leave off a widow's mourning to
reassume a marriage robe? for if you have forgotten it, my lords,
which would do no more honour to your sobriety than to your memory, I
undertake to show it to you, I who have preserved it; and perhaps if we
search well we shall find among the signatures the names of Lindsay of
Byres and William Ruthven. O noble Lord Herries," cried Mary, "loyal