If one must walk with masks and spectres, who
waft themselves from place to place as it were in vision rather than
reality, it might shake the soundest faith and turn the wisest head. I
sought, since I must needs avow my folly, the same Catherine Seyton
with whom you made me first acquainted, and whom I most strangely find
in this village of Kinross, gayest among the revellers, when I had but
just left her in the well-guarded castle of Lochleven, the sad
attendant of an imprisoned Queen-I sought her, and in her place I find
you, my mother, more strangely disguised than even she is."
"And what hadst thou to do with Catherine Seyton?" said the matron,
sternly; "is this a time or a world to follow maidens, or to dance
around a Maypole? When the trumpet summons every true-hearted Scotsman
around the standard of the true sovereign, shalt thou be found
loitering in a lady's bower?"
"No, by Heaven, nor imprisoned in the rugged walls of an island
castle!" answered Roland Graeme: "I would the blast were to sound even
now, for I fear that nothing less loud will dispel the chimerical
visions by which I am surrounded."
"Doubt not that it will be winded," said the matron, "and that so
fearfully loud, that Scotland will never hear the like until the last
and loudest blast of all shall announce to mountain and to valley that
time is no more. Meanwhile, be thou but brave and constant--Serve God
and honour thy sovereign--Abide by thy religion--I cannot--I will
not--I dare not ask thee the truth of the terrible surmises I have
heard touching thy falling away--perfect not that accursed
sacrifice--and yet, even at this late hour, thou mayest be what I have
hoped for the son of my dearest hope--what say I? the son of _my_
hope--thou shalt be the hope of Scotland, her boast and her
honour!--Even thy wildest and most foolish wishes may perchance be
fulfilled--I might blush to mingle meaner motives with the noble
guerdon I hold out to thee--It shames me, being such as I am, to
mention the idle passions of youth, save with contempt and the purpose
of censure.
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