esponded 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 James Melville, you
alone were right then, when you threw yourselves at my feet, entreating
me not to conclude this marriage, which, I see it clearly to-day, was
only a trap set for an ignorant woman by perfidious advisers or disloyal
lords."

"Madam," cried Ruthven, in spite of his cold impassivity beginning to
lose command of himself, while Lindsay was giving still more noisy and
less equivocal signs of impatience, "madam, all these discussions are
beside our aim: I beg you to return to it, then, and inform us if, your
life and honour guaranteed, you consent to abdicate the crown of
Scotland."

"And what safeguard should I have that the promises you he