an of from
fifty-five to sixty years of age, who had been handsome enough in her
youth to fix upon herself the glances of King James V, and who had had a
son by him, who was this same Murray whom we have already seen figuring
so often in Mary's history, and who, although his birth was illegitimate,
had always been treated as a brother by the queen.

Lady Lochleven had had a momentary hope, so great was the king's love for
her, of becoming his wife, which upon the whole was possible, the family
of Mar, from which she was descended, being the equal of the most ancient
and the noblest families in Scotland. But, unluckily, perhaps
slanderously, certain talk which was circulating among the young noblemen
of the time came to James's ears; it was said that together with her
royal lover the beautiful favourite had another, whom she had chosen, no
doubt from curiosity, from the very lowest class. It was added that this
Porterfeld, or Porterfield, was the real father of the child who had
already received the name of James Stuart, and whom the king was
educating as his son at the monastery of St. Andrews. These rumours,
well founded or not, had therefore stopped James V at the moment when, in
gratitude to her who had given him a son, he was on the point of raising
her to the rank of queen; so that, instead of marrying her himself, he
had invited her to choose among the nobles at court; and as she was very
handsome, and the king's favour went with the marriage, this choice,
which fell on Lord William Douglas of Lochleven, did not meet with any
resistance on his part. However, in spite of this direct protection,
that James V preserved for her all his life, Lady Douglas could never
forget that she had fingered higher fortune; moreover, she had a hatred
for the one who, according to herself, had usurped her place, and poor
Mary had naturally inherited the profound animosity that Lady Douglas
bore to her mother, which had already come to light in the few words that
the two women had exchanged. Besides, in ageing, whether from repentance
for her errors or from hypocrisy, Lady Douglas had become a prude and a
puritan; so that at this time she united with the natural acrimony of her
character all the stiffness of the new religion she had adopted.

William Douglas, who was the eldest son of Lord Lochleven, on his
mother's side half-brother of Murray, was a man of from thirty-five to
thirty-six years of age, athletic, with hard and st