it still
more desolate and gloomy, and to continue the influence of grief upon
her mind. Here the queen dowager found her, spending her time in
prayers and austerities of every kind, making herself and all her
family perfectly miserable. Many persons, at the present day, act,
under such circumstances, on the same principle and with the same
spirit, though they do not do it perhaps in precisely the same way.

One would suppose that Mary's mother would have preferred to remain
in France with her daughter and her mother and all her family
friends, instead of going back to Scotland, where she was, as it
were, a foreigner and a stranger. The reason why she desired to go
back was that she wished to be made _queen regent_, and thus have the
government of Scotland in her own hands. She would rather be queen
regent in Scotland than a simple queen _mother_ in France. While she
was in France, she urged the king to use all his influence to have
Arran resign his regency into her hands, and finally obtained
writings from him and from Queen Mary to this effect. She then left
France and went to Scotland, going through England on the way. The
young King of England, to whom Mary had been engaged by the
government when she was an infant in Janet Sinclair's arms, renewed
his proposals to the queen dowager to let her daughter become his
wife; but she told him that it was all settled that she was to be
married to the French prince, and that it was now too late to change
the plan.

There was a young gentleman, about nineteen or twenty years of age,
who came from Scotland also, not far from this time, to wait upon
Mary as her page of honor. A page is an attendant above the rank of
an ordinary servant, whose business it is to wait upon his mistress,
to read to her, sometimes to convey her letters and notes, and to
carry her commands to the other attendants who are beneath him in
rank and whose business it is actually to perform the services which
the lady requires. A page _of honor_ is a young gentleman who
sustains this office in a nominal and temporary manner for a princess
or a queen.

The name of Mary's page of honor, who came to her now from Scotland,
was Sir James Melville. The only reason for mentioning him thus
particularly, rather than the many other officers and attendants by
whom Mary was surrounded was, that the service which he thus
commenced was continued in various ways through the whole period of
Mary's life. We shall often