I was sent hither to attend Queen Mary, and to her I
acknowledge the duty of a servant through life and death. If any one
had expected service of another kind, I was not the party to render
it. I neither avow nor disclaim the doctrines of the reformed
church.--Will you have the truth?--It seems to me that the profligacy
of the Catholic clergy has brought this judgment on their own heads,
and, for aught I know, it may be for their reformation. But, for
betraying this unhappy Queen, God knows I am guiltless of the thought.
Did I even believe worse of her, than as her servant I wish--as her
subject I dare to do--I would not betray her--far from it--I would aid
her in aught which could tend to a fair trial of her cause."
"Enough! enough!" answered Catherine, clasping her hands together;
"then thou wilt not desert us if any means are presented, by which,
placing our Royal Mistress at freedom, this case may be honestly tried
betwixt her and her rebellious subjects?"
"Nay--but, fair Catherine," replied the page, "hear but what the Lord
of Murray said when he sent me hither."--
"Hear but what the devil said," replied the maiden, "rather than what
a false subject, a false brother, a false counsellor, a false friend,
said! A man raised from a petty pensioner on the crown's bounty, to be
the counsellor of majesty, and the prime distributor of the bounties
of the state;--one with whom rank, fortune, title, consequence, and
power, all grew up like a mushroom, by the mere warm good-will of the
sister, whom, in requital, he hath mewed up in this place of
melancholy seclusion--whom, in farther requital, he has deposed, and
whom, if he dared, he would murder!"
"I think not so ill of the Earl of Murray," said Roland Graeme; "and
sooth to speak," he added, with a smile, "it would require some bribe
to make me embrace, with firm and desperate resolution, either one
side or the other.
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