The servants received the produce of their spoil, and the two
fishers, turning from each other in silence, went each to his several
apartment.
Roland Graeme had spent about an hour in grumbling against Catherine
Seyton, the Queen, the Regent, and the whole house of Lochleven, with
George Douglas at the head of it, when the time approached that his
duty called him to attend the meal of Queen Mary. As he arranged his
dress for this purpose, he grudged the trouble, which, on similar
occasions, he used, with boyish foppery, to consider as one of the
most important duties of his day; and when he went to take his place
behind the chair of the Queen, it was with an air of offended dignity,
which could not escape her observation, and probably appeared to her
ridiculous enough, for she whispered something in French to her
ladies, at which the lady Fleming laughed, and Catherine appeared half
diverted and half disconcerted. This pleasantry, of which the subject
was concealed from him, the unfortunate page received, of course, as a
new offence, and called an additional degree of sullen dignity into
his mien, which might have exposed him to farther raillery, but that
Mary appeared disposed to make allowance for and compassionate his
feelings.
With the peculiar tact and delicacy which no woman possessed in
greater perfection, she began to soothe by degrees the vexed spirit of
her magnanimous attendant. The excellence of the fish which he had
taken in his expedition, the high flavour and beautiful red colour of
the trouts, which have long given distinction to the lake, led her
first to express her thanks to her attendant for so agreeable an
addition to her table, especially upon a _jour de jeune_; and
then brought on inquiries into the place where the fish had been
taken, their size, their peculiarities, the times when they were in
season, and a comparison between the Lochleven trouts and those which
are found in the lakes and rivers of the south of Scotland.
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