, these preparations made, she sat down
again at the window, ceaselessly carrying her eyes from the lake to the
little house in Kinross, shut up and dumb as usual.

The dinner-hour arrived: the queen was so happy that she received William
Douglas with more goodwill than was her wont, and it was with difficulty
she remained seated during the time the meal lasted; but she restrained
herself, and William Douglas withdrew, without seeming to have noticed
her agitation.

Scarcely had he gone than Mary ran to the window; she had need of air,
and her gaze devoured in advance those wide horizons which she was about
to cross anew; it seemed to her that once at liberty she would never shut
herself up in a palace again, but would wander about the countryside
continually: then, amid all these tremors of delight, from time to time
she felt unexpectedly heavy at heart. She then turned round to Mary
Seyton, trying to fortify her strength with hers, and the young girl kept
up her hopes, but rather from duty than from conviction.

But slow as they seemed to the queen, the hours yet passed: towards the
afternoon some clouds floated across the blue sky; the queen remarked
upon them joyfully to her companion; Mary Seyton congratulated her upon
them, not on account of the imaginary omen that the queen sought in them,
but because of the real importance that the weather should be cloudy,
that darkness might aid them in their flight. While the two prisoners
were watching the billowy, moving vapours, the hour of dinner arrived;
but it was half an hour of constraint and dissimulation, the more painful
that, no doubt in return for the sort of goodwill shown him by the queen
in the morning, William Douglas thought himself obliged, in his turn, to
accompany his duties with fitting compliments, which compelled the queen
to take a more active part in the conversation than her preoccupation
allowed her; but William Douglas did not seem in any way to observe this
absence of mind, and all passed as at breakfast.

Directly he had gone the queen ran to the window: the few clouds which
were chasing one another in the sky an hour before had thickened and
spread, and--all the blue was blotted out, to give place to a hue dull
and leaden as pewter. Mary Stuart's presentiments were thus realised: as
to the little house in Kinross, which one could still make out in the
dusk, it remained shut up, and seemed deserted.

Night fell: the light shone as usual;